WASHINGTON — The House Committee on Agriculture is working to relieve labor shortages that have seriously impacted producers in the United States, specifically through changes to the H-2A guest worker program.

On March 7, the committee’s Agriculture Labor Working Group (ALWG) released a final report on the H-2A program with over 20 recommendations to streamline the program and make labor more affordable to farmers and ranchers.

Of the 20 recommendations, 15 were unanimously approved by ALWG. Solutions offered include streamlining the recruiting and hiring of H-2A employees, expanding the H-2A program to meet year-round needs, paying employees based on duties performed for the majority of their day, and reforming wage calculation standards to provide stability in farmworker pay rates. The report also includes several weather-related worker protection recommendations.

The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) thanked ALWG for addressing the labor issue in farming.

“We are losing farms in America at a rapid pace and there is no question that our broken workforce system is partly to blame,” said Zippy Duvall, president of AFBF. “This report makes it clear, once again, that there is bipartisan agreement on the need to improve the H-2A program to better serve America’s agriculture sector. This working group of the House Agriculture Committee spent months studying and discussing this issue and now delivers important bipartisan solutions for America’s struggling agricultural labor force.”