News

Farm worker shortages needs action

The National Council of Agricultural Employers President says farmworker shortages have been growing for more than a decade.

Fred Leitz tells Brownfield the council represents about three quarters of the specialty crop growers in the country.  “In one year you can go bankrupt because of the money we get into these crops.”

He says past domestic workers are getting older and their families are less willing to travel throughout the harvest season.   “Over the last ten years it has just gotten worse and worse, where the H-2A program has had 58 or 59,000 people come through it in 2006, 140,000 in 2015 and we’re expecting it needs to have 180,000 come through it in 2016.”

Leitz says the H-2A visa program is too cumbersome to be sustainable and immigration reform is needed to improve access to a farm labor supply.  “This is a food security, national security issue to me.”  He says, “We need to know who’s in our country, we need to be able to harvest our own food.”

Leitz is a fourth-generation farmer in southwest Michigan and grows tomatoes, cucumbers, apples, blueberries and cantaloupes.

AUDIO: Interview with Fred Leitz