Oct 25, 2024

Ag Labor Review: Elections have consequences

Elections have consequences. We have heard this before but rarely, as I write this column less than three months out from the 2024 general election, have those consequences been so elusive to discern for agricultural employers.

Employers recognize that since inauguration day 2021, this administration has unleashed a tsunami of new regulations on the people who feed and clothe our nation. The regulations have come fast and furious with literally thousands of pages of new requirements foisted upon farm and ranch families.

I was doing an interview with a reporter last week and I was trying to drive this very point home for his article. I noted that when I was in college, I tried to take on the reading of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace. As I recall, it was awful just trying to keep all the characters straight in its 1,200 pages. And the Russian’s style of writing didn’t really rivet my attention either.

The reporter was amazed when I shared that in just the past 24 months, American agricultural employers have witnessed about three times as many pages of new labor regulations as there are pages in Tolstoy’s tome. And more new regulations, including a new one on heat, are on their way.

Election impacts on ag labor

Obviously, agricultural labor has not been lacking in laws or regulations derived from those laws. Unfortunately, those in political power believe that agriculture has been in a deficit. Instead of developing regulations that have some underpinning in economic reality, most of the thousands of pages issued are bereft of that necessity.

It is almost as if the issuers of these regulations have fallen into the very trap that Aldo Leopold wrote of in A Sand County Almanac when he said, “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”

While this Administration has been coming up with regulations, more than 100 appointees from its predecessor have been developing a new plan to increase America’s growing dependence on our foreign competition for food and fiber. These individuals, cast out because of the 2020 election, have been working with the Heritage Foundation on a “playbook” for a subsequent conservative follow on. They have dubbed this strategy Project 2025.

Today, about half of our existing domestic farm labor work force is in the country in an unauthorized status. They are not “undocumented” because agricultural employers, like every other employer in our economy, are prohibited from hiring individuals without documentation. However, the veracity of some documents may be better than others. Using USDA’s most recent Census of Agriculture, this population of unauthorized persons presently working on America’s farms and ranches may be as many as 950,000.

As with many things, the devil is found in the details

Under the Project 2025 “playbook,” all persons in the U.S. found to be in unauthorized status would be subject to immediate deportation. This would include people found working on farms and ranches, many of whom have been showing up for work every day for decades. While Project 2025 would deport existing farm workers, it also recommends the phasing out of the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Visa Program (H-2A Program).

Today, agricultural employers in the U.S. employ about 300,000 temporary or seasonal workers that have been vetted at a substantial cost to the employer to have a legally authorized H-2A Program team assist them in the planting, nurturing and harvest of their crops. Project 2025 would encourage the expenditure of significant government funds to enhance labor-saving techniques and robotics to supplant the people no longer here.

As I mentioned at the outset, elections have consequences. What those consequences might look like after November, I can only speculate. However, even though I may suffer from the spiritual danger of not owning a farm, I have a pretty good notion that breakfast does not come from the grocery.

Article written by Michael Marsh

Marsh has led the National Council of Agricultural Employers since 2017. A Wyoming native and certified public accountant, Marsh worked for a CPA firm with farm and ranch clients investigating fraud. He was director of finance for the Almond Board of California for 7 years and for 15 years was CEO of the largest U.S. dairy producer trade association.