LIME SPRINGS, Iowa (DTN) -- Amy Brass and her husband raise cattle, hogs and corn near Rochester, Minnesota. She wants to know how smaller farmers such as herself can compete against larger companies that offer benefits such as health care.
"It is incredibly difficult to find people who want to make agriculture their career," Brass told DTN. "We are trying to find qualified individuals, but when you do find someone, you say, 'OK, I can pay you X,' and the next question is 'Well, what are the benefits?' Right? I can offer you (health) insurance, but it's probably going to cost you close to half your hourly wage to pay for it. That's not financially viable for anyone."
Brass raised these challenges for smaller farmers at an event Tuesday with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, noting her family farm is just down the road from larger employers who do provide health benefits.
"That is something I would love to see USDA address. How do small and medium farmers compete with employers?" Brass asked. She added, "Maybe I can compete on dollars per hour, but I can't do the insurance piece."
Brass said health insurance is a missing piece for farmers and small businesses in general.
"I've talked to so many people who are entrepreneurs who can't keep employees just like us, and they are losing employees because they are going to find a job with benefits," Brass said. "I've talked to other people who would like to open a business, but they can't because the moment they quit their job, they lose their insurance."
Brass said there should be a way to level the playing field between smaller businesses and corporate America.
Responding, Vilsack said labor and insurance remain complicated problems for rural America. On the insurance side, Vilsack said, "That's part of the reason why the Affordable Care Act was passed was to basically give people the ability to get insurance in a way that doesn't put a significant burden on them or an employer."
Tied to that, though, Vilsack said the U.S. immigration system "is broken," but USDA has come up with a "Band-Aid" in a new pilot program USDA launched in September. The $65 million "Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program" will help farmers recruit workers from El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and parts of Mexico.
"It's a relatively small effort, obviously, in comparison to the size of the problem," Vilsack told reporters.
The program will help expand the pool of qualified H-2A guest workers but also improve the working conditions for those workers.
"The reality is most of the workers in American agriculture today are immigrants," Vilsack said. "That's the reality. I've had to have a hard conversation with folks in this room and every room like this."
Still, the H-2A program is primarily for temporary guest workers, an issue that has complicated the livestock industry that needs labor year-round.
The Farmworker Modernization Act, which passed the House in the last Congress, would have allowed some guest workers to stay in the country for up to three years at a time, but that bill stalled in the Senate. No similar bill has advanced this year. Vilsack said the pilot program was created in response and modeled after the bill. Farmers would receive grants to help them pay workers or help with housing.
Last month, the Biden administration also granted work status to as many as 472,000 Venezuelan migrants that have applied for asylum. Most of the attention on that announcement has focused on Venezuelans in New York City. Agriculture has largely been left out of that. Asked if USDA has a role to help connect those people with farmers, Vilsack said the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor would have to work through those issues to allow Venezuelan migrants to work on farms.
"The H-2A program is dependent upon individuals getting into this country in a legitimate, legal way," Vilsack said. "Those folks have come, but their status hasn't been determined yet. Many of them seek refugee status that hasn't been determined. So, there would have to be a change of Department of Labor or DHS rules to basically be able to provide that particular population access."
Farmers continue to rely more on the H-2A program. The program had 372,000 temporary jobs filled in fiscal-year 2022, and the first half of 2023 showed a 10% growth in jobs filled, according to the Department of Labor.
While the media focus remains on illegal border crossings from Mexico, Vilsack said Congress needs to address the larger immigration challenges to deal with labor in rural areas.
"A lot of the concerns that have been expressed here about wage levels and availability of workers are directly tied to the fact that we don't have a working immigration system," he said.
The border needs to be addressed, "But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can fix this problem and fix that problem at the same time. We don't necessarily have to wait."
Applications for the USDA farmworker pilot program must be received by Nov. 28. For more information, go to https://www.usda.gov/….
See "Vilsack Calls for Farm Bill Extension, Pushes Back on Potential USDA Program Cuts" here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….
Also see "House Aggies Form Labor Working Group" here: https://www.dtnpf.com/….
Chris Clayton can be reached at Chris.Clayton@dtn.com
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