The H-2A Farm Worker Visa, Explained: Who Picks America’s Produce and Why the Rules Are Changing
The Morning Harvest: Farm and Food News, No. 011, Sunday, October 17, 2026. Weekend deep dive. Market and program data are as of the dates noted in each section; the most recent figures are the September Consumer Price Index released October 14, 2026 and the Department of Labor’s fiscal 2025 H-2A statistics (data as of September 30, 2025).
Today in 30 seconds
H-2A is the visa that lets farms hire foreign workers for seasonal jobs when no U.S. workers are available. It dates to 1986 and runs through the Labor Department, USCIS, and the State Department.
The Labor Department certified 398,258 H-2A positions in fiscal 2025, up from 48,336 in fiscal 2005. Florida, Georgia, California, and Washington lead.
A federal judge in California ruled on August 26, 2026 that the new H-2A wage formula is unlawful, and a back pay clock has been running since September 2.
Fruit and vegetable prices rose 3.7 percent in the year to September, twice the 1.8 percent rise for groceries overall, and labor is up to 38 percent of costs on fruit farms.
Only about 16,000 employers use H-2A out of 1.9 million U.S. farms. Small growers should design plantings around the labor they have.
New Jersey’s certified H-2A workers grew from about 500 in 2008 to more than 2,500 in 2025, and a Hammonton blueberry grower reported finding only about 200 of the 600 to 700 pickers he needed.
What is the H-2A visa and how does it work?
H-2A is a temporary, nonimmigrant visa for agricultural work. An employer who expects a seasonal or temporary need, and who can show that not enough U.S. workers are available, can bring in foreign workers for that season and must send them home when it ends. USDA’s Economic Research Service puts the average certified job at about 5.75 months.
The program was created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, the same law that set up the modern employment verification system. Its roots run back to the Bracero program, which brought Mexican workers to U.S. farms from 1942 until it ended in 1964. The wage floor at the center of today’s fight, the adverse effect wage rate (AEWR), was created so that guest workers would not pull down wages for U.S. farmworkers.
Three federal agencies share the process. The Department of Labor certifies that no U.S. workers are available and sets the wage rules. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approves the petition. The State Department issues the visa at a consulate abroad. State workforce agencies handle the domestic recruitment step. USDA reports that more than 90 percent of fruit and vegetable H-2A workers come from Mexico.
In exchange for access to the workers, employers take on obligations that the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division enforces:
Housing at no cost to the worker, inspected and approved.
Transportation to and from the worker’s home country and daily transportation to the job.
A “three-fourths guarantee”: work for at least 75 percent of the hours in the contract period.
Pay at the highest of five rates: the AEWR, the state or federal minimum wage, the local prevailing wage, any union contract wage, or the agreed rate.
Sources: USDA ERS, Farm Labor; DOL Wage and Hour Division, H-2A; AFBF, AEWR Changes for 2026-2027; UC Davis Rural Migration News
How many H-2A workers are there, and what do they earn?
The Department of Labor certified 398,258 H-2A positions in fiscal 2025 (October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025), out of 415,496 requested, on 24,725 applications. In fiscal 2005 the figure was 48,336 positions; in fiscal 2015 it was 139,832. Not every certified job becomes a visa: ERS says about 80 percent do, and the State Department issued 315,328 H-2A visas in fiscal 2024.
Top states, fiscal 2025 positions certified: Florida 56,934 (14.3 percent), Georgia 42,723 (10.7 percent), California 35,138 (8.8 percent), Washington 34,560 (8.7 percent), North Carolina 26,123 (6.6 percent). Michigan, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, and New York round out the top ten; New York had 10,658.
Top occupation: crop, nursery, and greenhouse farmworkers, 326,438 positions, or 82 percent of the total.
Hired farm jobs overall: 1.18 million in 2024, according to ERS, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data. ERS estimated in 2022 that H-2A workers were about 10 percent of the nation’s crop workers.
Work authorization: USDA’s National Agricultural Workers Survey found 42 percent of crop farmworkers held no legal work authorization in 2020 to 2022, down from a peak near 55 percent around 2000.
Wages are the fight. Under the old formula, based on USDA’s Farm Labor Survey, the 2025 AEWR averaged $17.43 an hour across states, according to the Economic Policy Institute, with a range of about $15 to $20 (New Jersey and Pennsylvania were $17.96, California $19.97). Under the Labor Department’s October 2025 interim rule, each state now has two rates. The American Farm Bureau Federation calculated the 2026-2027 averages at $12.31 for Skill Level I (entry level) and $16.07 for Skill Level II. Because employers must pay the highest applicable rate, state minimum wages have become the real floor in a number of states. Average hourly pay for nonsupervisory farmworkers was $18.13 in 2024, per ERS.
Sources: DOL OFLC, H-2A Selected Statistics FY2025 Q4; USDA ERS, Farm Labor; EPI, October 2025; AFBF, August 6, 2026; DOL FLAG, AEWR page
Why is the H-2A program in the news right now?
Three threads came together this fall: a court ruling on wages, a reform bill, and immigration enforcement on farms.
August 2025: USDA discontinued the Farm Labor Survey, the data source that had set the AEWR since 1987.
October 2, 2025: The Labor Department published an interim final rule (90 FR 47914) without the usual comment period. It switched the AEWR to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, which covers nonfarm employers; created Skill Level I (17th percentile) and Skill Level II (50th percentile) rates; let employers reduce pay for the value of free housing, capped at 30 percent; and let the AEWR cover nonfarm duties up to half the hours. DOL estimated the rule would reduce H-2A wages by more than $2 billion a year; The Packer reported a projected $17.3 billion over ten years. EPI estimated losses of $4.4 billion to $5.4 billion a year across H-2A and U.S. farmworkers. Grower groups including the National Council of Agricultural Employers and the North American Blueberry Council supported the rule; the United Farm Workers sued on November 21, 2025.
May 2026: The court denied the UFW’s request for an injunction, leaving the rule in place.
June 2026: DHS and DOL issued guidance that dairy operations may use H-2A if they can show a temporary or seasonal need, reviewed case by case.
June 30, 2026: House Agriculture Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) introduced H.R. 9535, the Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act, with support from the American Farm Bureau, Western Growers, the National Milk Producers Federation, and more than 400 other groups. It would expand H-2A to year-round operations, aim to control program costs, and streamline administration. It does not create a path to citizenship. As of October 5 it sat in the House Judiciary Committee.
August 3, 2026: DOL published the first full annual AEWR refresh under the new method (91 FR 48946). Level I rates rose in 39 of 54 jurisdictions and fell in 15.
August 26, 2026: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California (United Farm Workers v. DOL, No. 1:25-cv-01614) held the interim rule unlawful, finding the skill tiers, the housing deduction, the nonfarm data source, and the nonfarm-duties rule arbitrary and capricious, and found DOL lacked good cause to skip public comment. The court did not vacate the rule. It ordered DOL to “promptly produce a new methodology.” DOL’s September 2 notice says employers who pay the current rates from that date until new rates are issued “may be required to make wage adjustment payments.” No payment is owed yet, and DOL says it will keep contesting back pay.
August 21 to September 17, 2026: ICE agents stopped vans belonging to Melhorn, a Mount Joy, Pennsylvania poultry hauler, on three early mornings and arrested 17 workers, according to the borough police chief. PennAg Industries president Chris Herr said the workers averaged about $80,000 a year and did most of the bird removal in last winter’s avian flu outbreak, when 7.2 million birds were composted on Lancaster County farms. Pennsylvania farm groups are circulating a letter to Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins asking for a simpler legal pathway. Thompson has said he supports enforcement against criminals but opposes stripping agriculture of its workforce.
Sources: DOL OFLC notice, September 2, 2026; Fisher Phillips, August 27, 2026; The Packer, August 27, 2026; Rep. Thompson press release, June 30, 2026; Farm Credit East, October 5, 2026; High Plains Journal, June 19, 2026; LancasterOnline, October 10, 2026; Farm Progress, October 13, 2026
How does farm labor affect grocery prices?
Labor is the largest single cost in fresh produce. ERS research puts labor at up to 38 percent of production costs on fruit and tree nut farms and up to 29 percent on vegetable and melon farms. The North American Blueberry Council says labor is more than 40 percent of production costs for blueberries, and that AEWRs in blueberry states rose an average of 25 percent from 2021 to 2025.
The September 2026 Consumer Price Index, released October 14, shows the fruits and vegetables index up 3.7 percent over 12 months, against 1.8 percent for food at home and 3.7 percent for all items. Across the whole food system, salaries and benefits take 54.1 cents of every food dollar (2024), while the farm share is 11.8 cents.
Michigan State University economist Zach Rutledge estimates that a 10 percent drop in farm employment raises food prices by about 2.94 percent, or roughly $3.4 billion on a specialty crop sector worth about $115 billion a year. When domestic labor is short, supply shifts abroad: ERS found imports grew from 23 percent of U.S. fresh fruit availability in 2000 to 2002 to 40 percent in 2017 to 2019, and from 14 percent to 31 percent for fresh vegetables.
Sources: BLS CPI, September 2026; USDA ERS Amber Waves, December 2022; USDA ERS Food Dollar, 2024 data; The Packer, December 29, 2025; FreshFruitPortal, February 6, 2026
What does the farm labor shortage mean if you own land?
H-2A is built for commercial farms. About 16,000 employers filed in fiscal 2025, out of roughly 1.9 million U.S. farms counted in the 2022 Census of Agriculture. Approved housing, international transportation, a three-fourths hours guarantee, and recruitment paperwork are a heavy lift for a grower with a few acres. The same rules that make H-2A workable for a 650-acre blueberry farm make it impractical for a 2-acre one.
The lesson for a landowner is to design around labor before planting:
Choose crops whose harvest spreads out. Tree fruit ripens across weeks; strawberries and fresh-market tomatoes need crews in a short window and are the hardest crops to mechanize, according to ERS.
Match the planting to the hands you have. A quarter acre of trellised blackberries or blueberries, or 30 fruit trees, is a real harvest that two people can pick on weekends.
Let customers do the picking. U-pick and farm-stand models move the harvest labor to the buyer.
Expect timelines, not instant yields: berries typically begin producing in their second year, grapes in their third, and tree fruit in years three to five.
Labor is the reason big produce farms are nervous this year. For a homeowner, it is the reason a well-designed planting that needs no hired crew is worth more every season. If you have been thinking about putting your land to work, this is what we design at Curated Nature: stop mowing grass, start growing fruit.
Sources: UC Davis Rural Migration News; USDA ERS Amber Waves, December 2022; Curated Nature, Backyard Fruit Profits
Garden State minute: how much does New Jersey depend on H-2A workers?
New Jersey is a small H-2A state that is growing fast. A Rutgers Cooperative Extension factsheet by Seowoo Lee (April 10, 2026) reports about 500 certified H-2A workers in 2008 and more than 2,500 in 2025, concentrated in Cumberland, Gloucester, and Salem counties. In 2021 alone, Atlantic County’s certified H-2A workers jumped from 15 to 252 and Cumberland’s from 304 to 599. New Jersey had 7,948 direct farm employees in 2024, and contract workers made up 20 percent of farm employment. H-2A workers in the state averaged $17.68 an hour in 2024, while direct-hire farmworkers averaged $852 a week.
Wage floors matter here. New Jersey’s minimum wage for farm workers is $14.20 an hour in 2026 (the general rate is $15.92), and state policy raises the farm rate each year until it matches the general minimum in 2030. Farm Credit East lists New Jersey’s 2026-2027 AEWR at $14.10 for Skill Level I and $17.58 for Skill Level II, so the state farm minimum is the effective floor for entry-level H-2A jobs, and the old Farm Labor Survey rate for the state was $17.96.
The shortage is not abstract in Hammonton. Brandon Raso of Variety Farms told a Grow It Here webinar, reported by The Packer on December 29, 2025, that his 650-acre blueberry farm typically needs 600 to 700 workers, found about 200, and lost an estimated 2.5 million pounds of fruit to the ground. New Jersey Farm Bureau’s 2026 policy book asks for a guest worker program without a cap and for restoring a $2.28-an-hour farm labor housing credit for H-2A workers that the state labor department disallowed.
Sources: Rutgers, Ag Labor in New Jersey, April 10, 2026; NJDOL minimum wage release, October 1, 2025; Farm Credit East, October 5, 2026; The Packer, December 29, 2025; New Jersey Farm Bureau 2026 Policies
From the farm
Our event from the farm was a big success. At 5pm the wind stopped and the sun came out. We had a great turn out and a lot of fun. Today we are breaking down the event and putting things into storage. Hopefully I have enough time to swap out the radiator on the well pump today!
What to watch next on H-2A
A new wage formula. DOL must “promptly” publish a new AEWR methodology; it has given no date and may use a proposed rule, a new interim rule, or an appeal. The back pay period began September 2, 2026, and the court will take up back pay after the new method is out.
H.R. 9535. The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act is in the House Judiciary Committee with few legislative days left before the November 3 midterm election.
Fiscal 2026 numbers. DOL’s full-year H-2A statistics usually post within weeks of the September 30 year end. Third-quarter data came out August 14.
Enforcement. Watch whether the Pennsylvania letter to Secretary Rollins and the dairy guidance change how year-round operations hire.
Own land? Put it to work.
The farms in this story are short of hands. Your backyard does not have to be. Curated Nature designs orchards, vineyards, and berry plantings for landowners anywhere in the country, and installs and manages them locally in Southern New Jersey. Site visits start with soil testing and a layout built around your climate, and every quote is custom to the property.
Stop mowing grass. Start growing fruit: https://www.curatednature.co/backyard-fruit-profits
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