Farm Business Strategies for Worker Delays

The importance of the H-2A guest farmworker visa program in supplying the needed foreign farm labor inputs has actually grown in recent years. In 2019 it supplied more nearly 28 percent of the farming sector’s total hired workers – a significant jump from about 7 percent 10 years ago. When pandemic conditions kicked in, the government promptly released regulations that ensured that H-2A workers’ availability will not be hampered. Indeed, H-2A foreign labor certification and visa petition approvals remained high by historical standards. However, port entry and border crossing data indicate an overall decline of about 96 percent -- especially in April 2020 when most farms started to require the services of farm workers. Through a grant from the Georgia Farm Bureau (GFB), UGA agricultural and applied economists conducted a survey on the H-2A employment experiences of agribusiness firms during the pandemic in Georgia, North Carolina, and Florida. The survey found that workers were about four to five weeks late in their arrival. Given these operating constraints, farm business respondents to our survey indicated various coping strategies – greater reliance on family members, reducing off-farm employment time, resigning from off-farm jobs, and modifying production methods in favor of less labor-intensive alternatives. These decisions, however, resulted in about 20 percent deterioration in their farm household incomes. The domestic labor alternative was only explored in 30 percent of the cases and resulted in a 16 percent reduction in incomes, perhaps due to relative lower worker productivities in comparison to their foreign (H-2A) counterparts.