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Farming’s a tough business. Most of the people doing it now, at scale, are driven survivors with a knack for innovation, like Thayne Larson.
Larson’s operation in north central Kansas narrowly survived the 1980s farm crisis. He grew hay for local cattle operations, but, in dry years, he couldn’t grow enough, and in wet ones, he grew too much, and the price tanked. So, Larson started a business buying, selling, and shipping hay nationwide, which spun into a diverse family of companies called Bestifor Farms, with thirty-some employees.
“Between the pet food company, and software, running the grain elevator mechanics, we have secretaries and staff and HR and accountants,” said Larson, sitting in the Bestifor board room. “It adds up before you know it.”
Larson’s also running a trucking business, while growing lots and lots of hay, corn and soybeans.
He could use more employees, but said that, where he is, in Bellville, Kansas, an hour from the nearest Walmart, no one looking for a job is willing to put in the long hours and hard work necessary to keep a farm running. Larson said he’s got little choice but to hire foreign guest workers through the H-2A visa program.
“You're not replacing workers here. They're just filling a void,” said Larson. “If you're going to be in this business, you got to find people.”
Larson has found good people through the guest worker program. Three of them spent a recent afternoon working diligently to get a precision corn planter ready to run hard this spring. Nobody stopped to check their phone.
“That’s what you get, just work, work, work,” Larson said of the guest workers.
But Larson said the H-2A visa program has grown more complex in that time, becoming a regulatory and bureaucratic minefield that keeps one of his employees tied up just handling the paperwork.
It’s also become more expensive. Larson estimates total labor costs – including transporting workers from their home countries and free housing – hit about $30 an hour.
So, he was delighted when the Trump Administration changed the way H-2A wages are calculated, cutting guest farm worker pay.
“Absolutely, it needed to happen, because you could not afford to pay,” Larson said.
The U.S. Department of Labor abruptly issued an “interim final rule” last fall, making the changes. It split H-2A workers into two different categories based on skill, allowed employers to start charging for housing, and threw out the old way of calculating H-2A wage rates.
The upshot was a big pay cut for many guest farm workers and pushback from organizations across the political spectrum.
H-2A changes draw fire from left and right
The H-2A program has exploded, from about 50,000 foreign farm workers two decades ago to nearly 400,000 last year. Cutting guest worker wages will make the program more attractive to farmers and likely drive more growth.
But a flood of guest workers raises issues for farm workers’ groups concerned with pay and for immigrant hardliners.
John Miano is legal counsel for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for strict immigration limits. He backs much of Trump’s MAGA agenda but does not view the H-2A visa program as “America First.”
“It provides a subsidy for employers to bypass the free market,” said Miano. “I can go for a massive pool of cheap, cheaper foreign labor that undermines Americans.”
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has served as a blueprint for much of the president’s domestic agenda, calls for the H-2A visa program to be phased out over the next decade or two.
At the same time, the United Farm Workers union is suing to stop the Labor Department’s rule change. It argues that the department acted without first offering a public comment period, as required by law.
Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers union, said while H-2A wage rates vary from state to state, some workers saw a cut amounting to about $5 an hour.
“What he's doing right now is transferring $2.4 billion a year from the farm workers' pockets to the employers,” Romero said of Trump.
That also could impact other workers, she said.
Congress set up the guest worker program with safeguards to protect domestic incomes. The wage rates are supposed to be set high enough that they could have no ‘adverse effect’ on the livelihoods of American workers or of job seekers.
The lower pay for guest workers means lower pay for domestic farm hands competing for the same jobs, according to Romero.
“We are not lowering the pay only of H-2A workers. We're lowering the pay of domestic workers. We're making these workers more vulnerable,” she said.
The most vulnerable are those working in the U.S. illegally.
A woman named Lourdes, who didn’t want to use her last name because she does not have legal immigration status, said she’s supported her children working in the fields and greenhouses of eastern Colorado. She said the work was hard, but fairly steady, until recently.
“Back when the tomato season was in full swing, they let a lot of people go, laid them off from their jobs in the tomato fields, because they started bringing in workers with work permits known as H-2A visas,” said Lourdes through an interpreter.
The pressure to expand the H-2A visa program is strong. Farm organizations have pushed lawmakers to allow more foreign workers into the country. Bills in both the House and the Senate, backed by both Democrats and Republicans, would make the H-2A visa system cheaper and easier for farmers to find legal, foreign guest workers willing to do the hard, dirty work of growing food in America.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
