The Federal government implemented a social program that farmers and ranchers are required
to run. A friend of mine said something like that the other day and I told her it was interesting
to think of it that way.

The more I thought about it and let it stew, the more it made me stew. The heat was turned
higher as I analyzed the consequences further. This “social program” is not funded by the
Treasury but is instead mandated by the government to come from the pockets of hard-
working farm and ranch families pockets.

It was not supposed to be this way but as we can see from the actions of the prior
Administration in Washington, D.C., this is what they have morphed it into.

The H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker Program is intended to allow farmers and ranchers to
legally hire foreign workers when there are too few domestic workers who are ready, willing,
and available to do the work that needs to be done. Under the law, these jobs must be
temporary or seasonal so unfortunately, those farm jobs that are not, do not qualify.

Consequently, my friends in the dairy industry who need milkers, can’t use the program to fill
their need for those workers. Similarly, mushroom farms, year-round greenhouses, hog
operators, and many other livestock businesses, etc., are shut out as well.

So how was this temporary work platform for agricultural work transformed into a social
program? It took a lot of work and regulators unleashed to do their damage.

The global marketplace for agricultural labor ought to determine the wages that are paid and
typically do. A given level of demand for a commodity, including labor, with a given level of
supply for that commodity will determine its price. That’s what farm and ranch families
experience every day. They produce a crop for a market that will pay them for it given the
supply of the crop and demand for that crop in the market. Pretty simple, isn’t it? Supply and
demand.

This is the way it should work unless, of course, government regulators have a social agenda to
advance and are let loose.

Agricultural businesses that participate in the H-2A program and use foreign workers to fill jobs
for which domestic workers are unavailable, must not adversely affect the wages and working
conditions of American workers similarly employed. That makes sense. Hire Americans first.

However, to affect the absence of an adverse effect, the regulators put in place rules to
advance a social agenda in the prior Administration.

Not only did the wage regulation promulgated by the Biden Department of Labor (DOL),
continue its misuse of the USDA’s Farm Labor Survey (FLS) to establish wages for most workers,
the social engineering piece was not profound enough for the bureaucrats. We must
understand that the average gross wages compiled by the FLS do not represent a wage rate
found in agriculture anywhere on Earth. It includes not only base wages but incentive
payments for productivity, overtime, bonuses, piece rates, and any other compensation paid to
workers divided by the number of hours worked. It also includes the wages paid to H-2A
workers who are the unintended beneficiaries of the wage so compiled. Crazy!

Apparently, because markets aren’t trusted by bureaucrats, and some politicians believe they
can hoodwink their constituents into believing that everything should be free, the prior
Administration took it a step further. They decided that for common tasks done on the farm,
like driving a truck from the field to the packing shed, building a corral for your livestock, driving
your coworkers from the housing to the job site, that a separate state by state wage series
should establish that.

This action of course had the foreseeable consequence of shuttering American farms, forfeiting
our food production to our competition all to boost wages far beyond what the market will pay.
A social program to transfer assets from agricultural enterprises to their employees.

Similarly, activists in the Biden DOL put forth regulations under the guise of “Worker
Protection” that the U.S. Supreme Court and the Congress had both indicated wouldn’t fly.
Courts shut this down, at no small cost to the people who had to litigate it, and now this
Administration is working to rescind that foolishness.

This Administration should do the same with the AEWR rule. Let markets work and give
American farm and ranch families a break from this social engineering.

Let Freedom Ring!