Temporary guest workers are key to U.S. agriculture

STARKVILLE, Miss. -- Mississippi’s agricultural industry has a long history of using legal temporary agricultural workers to help meet seasonal labor needs, particularly in labor-intensive crops.

Sectors in Mississippi’s agricultural industry rely on significant numbers of workers hired through the H-2A Temporary Agricultural Worker Program, overseen by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Elizabeth Canales, an agricultural economist with the Mississippi State University Extension Service, said this temporary agricultural visa program, which allows producers to hire guest workers, has been expanding in recent years.

“Nationally, it is estimated that about one in six hired ag workers are H-2A workers,” Canales said. “In fiscal year 2025, there were 7,363 H-2A positions certified in Mississippi. Not all certified positions necessarily result in a visa being issued, but generally more than 80% do.”

About 500 companies have filed paperwork to hire guest workers in Mississippi. These include industries such as vegetables, catfish, sod grass, row crops and gin operations.

“The specialty crop sector, which includes vegetables, fruit and tree nuts, makes up the largest employer of foreign workers in the state,” Canales said.

Jermaine Perier, Extension entomologist at the Central Mississippi Research and Extension Center in Raymond, said outside of backyards and homestead specialty crop production, H-2A is necessary to meet the labor demand for harvest in large-scale operations.

“This is the typical trend everywhere especially for vegetables and any other produce you purchase in the grocery section,” said Perier, who is also a researcher with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station. “A sitting crop, unharvested, becomes more vulnerable to pests each day. Losing an entire crop to a pest outbreak because you’re short-staffed, even for just a day, becomes a real possibility, especially if the operation is certified organic.

“A lot of the workers on H-2A are often returnees who have developed skills associated with the crops they’re familiar with, so the farmers have established a level of trust with them and vice versa,” he said.

Calhoun County, the epicenter of the state’s sweet potato industry, by far tops the list of counties hiring H-2A laborers. This county had 2,774 certified positions in 2025, or 42% of the state’s total. George County was next with 59 H-2A positions that largely support the produce industry, and Chickasaw County, also in sweet potato country, had the third highest number of H-2A workers.

Lorin Harvey, Extension sweet potato specialist, said he is often asked why local American workers are not hired for these positions.

“Frankly, that workforce doesn’t exist,” he said. “Hard, physical, outdoor work plus seasonal employment is a very difficult combination for building a large and dependable local workforce. Farmers have tried hiring locally. In fact, they are legally required to make this attempt before they can use the H2-A program.”

Harvey said in 2025, more than 415,000 agricultural labor jobs were advertised nationally, but less than 500 of them had an American applicant.

“Farmers aren’t using H-2A because they don’t want American workers,” he said. “They’re using the program because America still wants American-grown food, but we don’t have enough domestic workers willing and available to do the seasonal work required to plant and harvest it.”

Hiring H-2A employees is a complex and expensive process that usually requires hiring agents to navigate the system, he added.

“It takes a lot of planning, it doesn’t last year-round, labor rates can change in the middle of the contract and government can change rules on a whim,” Harvey said, listing some of the challenges facing employers who use the program.

“Despite all that, the labor situation is bad enough that many farms must use the program year after year to ensure their crop gets planted and harvested,” he said. “Without H-2A, there would not be a specialty crop industry.”

Timothy Ayankojo, Extension vegetable specialist at the North Mississippi Research and Extension Center in Verona, agreed that the H-2A program is necessary to get food on American tables.

“Most specialty crops are either grown or harvested during the hottest part of the year in Mississippi,” said Ayankojo, who is also a MAFES researcher. “This coupled with per-hour rate makes it much more challenging for commercial growers to recruit locally. By default, they are dependent largely on the H-2A workers for the daily farm operation, especially during the harvest period.”

Canales explained the process required to use migrant workers.

“The employer first submits an H-2A job opportunity to the U.S. Department of Labor,” she said. “After the job order is reviewed for completeness, the employer applies for Temporary Employment Certification.”

The employer must recruit U.S. workers and demonstrate that none were available before they can fill the positions with migrant labor.

“Once the employer receives DOL labor certification, they file a petition with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to request the H-2A workers. If the petition is approved, workers overseas can then apply for their visas and once approved, travel to the United States to begin work,” Canales said.

Wages for H-2A workers have minimums set by the U.S. Department of Labor and governed by the Adverse Effect Wage Rate or applicable state or federal minimum wage which are intended to make sure hiring these workers does not adversely affect the wages of U.S. workers.

In addition to wages, the employer must provide housing at no cost, as well as international transportation from and to the worker’s home country. The federal government also sets other travel requirements and employment conditions, Canales said.

H-2A positions are generally approved for up to 10 months. Farmers must go through the process each year based on their labor needs for that season.

Canales said most farmers pay for someone else to handle the initial paperwork, although they must keep up with housing, wages, transportation and other employment requirements while the workers are on their farm.

“It is an expensive program,” Canales said. “By the time a farmer pays the application fees, recruitment costs, transportation and other expenses involved in bringing workers to the farm, they may have already invested several thousand dollars before the workers even start working.”

Harvey said despite the costs, these workers are necessary as fruits and vegetables cannot wait in the field until employees are found to harvest them.

“A sweet potato farmer doesn’t just need 150 people who might come to work. They need 150 people who will show up this morning, tomorrow morning and the morning after that until the crop is safely out of the field,” he said. “That is why H-2A has become such an important part of American specialty-crop agriculture.”

Losing access to this dependable, seasonal workforce would have significant repercussions.

“It can mean fewer fruits and vegetables grown in America, higher production costs, more imported produce on our grocery store shelves and greater dependence on other countries for our food supply,” Harvey said.

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