By Chris Butts
The new year provides us with the opportunity to reflect, reset and develop new goals and objectives for the coming months. Looking back to January of 2025, the fruit and vegetable industry has made progress on important issues like labor rates and H-2A program rules.
Successful Conference
Here in Georgia, we are finding reason for optimism. We just wrapped up the 2026 Southeast Regional Fruit and Vegetable Conference in beautiful and sunny weather in Savannah. Following four years of construction, we celebrated the completion of the new facility by growing the trade show floor and increasing the number of exhibitor spaces.
This year’s conference featured a focus on technology and automation and how these tools can ultimately help growers produce more food with fewer inputs. This includes a partnership with the University of Georgia’s Grand Farm that features start-up technologies to speed the delivery of time-saving technology to Southeast fruit and vegetable farms.
The conference also offers the opportunity to bring industry members together with industry experts, regulators and elected officials to discuss ways that we can work together to improve the industry. These sessions improve communications between the industry and the officials who are making decisions that have real impacts on the farm. Growers met with representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Risk Management Agency to discuss opportunities to improve crop insurance programs for specialty crop growers and heard how USDA Section 32 purchases can be viable market alternatives for fruit and vegetable growers.
Coalition to Address Top Concerns
Of all the subjects covered, labor and wage rates continue to top the list of concerns for many growers. In Georgia, use of the H-2A program continues to grow. The documented and reliable workforce it provides is a critical tool for many specialty crop operations across the Southeast.
There is also a cautious sense of optimism for the H-2A program following positive changes that establish a new methodology for determining the adverse effect wage rate (AEWR). These changes, under the leadership of President Trump, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins and Department of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, should result in an AEWR that is more market-based and reflective of wages in rural farming communities.
However, uncertainty remains on how these and other needed improvements will impact the program in the long term. Prior to the Trump actions, growers faced double-digit increases to the AEWR that far outpaced inflation or other cost-of-living measurements. These wild swings introduced uncertainty into the industry as growers were unable to forecast their labor costs — the single largest expense item for many fruit and vegetable growers. To continue to chip away at that uncertainty, changes that codify these improvements permanently are needed now.
Enter the Ag Wage Reform Coalition, a grassroots organization that now includes 35 agricultural organizations from eight states. The coalition is calling on Congress to enact legislation to codify changes to the AEWR methodology and to make other needed improvements to the program permanent.
The coalition began as an effort between the Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association and the North Carolina Sweetpotato Commission when the organizations filed Freedom of Information Act requests seeking to understand why wages were increasing so quickly. The group now represents ag interests from across the country who are calling for very specific policy changes to bring stability and certainty to the H-2A program. The effort will culminate in a press conference in Washington on Feb. 24 with growers, representatives and senators calling for changes in the H-2A program. Visit www.agwagereform.com to learn more about the coalition.
Agricultural labor issues are not unique to Georgia. These issues have the potential to bring the industry together to make long-overdue changes to the H-2A program. Food security is national security, and without a viable and affordable H-2A program, growers cannot continue to produce the fresh and healthy produce that keeps our country fed.
Chris Butts is the executive director of the Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association.