Source: THE HILL, 7/21/18



Those of us living and working in rural and small town America have a message for our city cousins. We need workers and we need them now. Whether we’re making maple syrup in Vermont, picking apples in Washington, harvesting grapes in California, milking cows in Wisconsin, processing peaches in Georgia, feeding pigs in Iowa, packing pickles in Michigan or trail-driving in Colorado, we need access to a dependable source of ag labor. We’ve become increasingly dependent over the years on migrant labor, legal and illegal, to help run our farms, ranches, processing plants and service industries. Therein lies agriculture’s labor woes. Sourcing legal migrant labor is getting harder and harder for America’s food producers.

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