Arizona farmers say they’re running out of time and workers.
John Boelts, President of the Arizona Farm Bureau and owner of Desert Premium Farms in Yuma, tells ABC15 the agricultural industry is facing a chronic labor shortage, one that could spell disaster for farms across the country if left unaddressed.
“We don’t have the folks to work on farms. It’s causing farms to go out of business and causing imports to fill that gap,” Boelts said.
Boelts has owned Desert Premium Farms for more than 16 years and relies on the H-2A guest worker visa program to fill the gap in his workforce, which allows U.S. employers to bring in foreign workers for temporary agricultural jobs.
“It’s the only thing we have right now to keep agriculture working,” he said.
But Boelts said it doesn’t come close to addressing the hundreds of thousands of workers needed across the farming industry, adding that the program is expensive and deeply flawed.
“You have to work with five federal agencies. You have to work with lawyers. It’s a nine-month process, and then the workers can only stay temporarily for a couple of seasons. It’s a big challenge the way the program is designed. We need it modernized,” said Boelts.
This sentiment is shared by others in the industry, including Craig Caballero, CEO of United Dairymen of Arizona. In an interview with ABC15 earlier this year, Caballero called for a new visa program tailored to the realities of modern agriculture.
“We need a program that’s neutral to the American taxpayer, one that’s verifiable, and one that our industry can support. We’d sponsor it in any way we could,” he said. “The amount of workers on farms is becoming fewer and fewer by the year.”
Caballero said Dairy farms aren’t eligible for the H-2A program because it only applies to seasonal work, and dairy farming is year-round.
"For dairy, unfortunately, it’s non-existent,” Caballero said.
In response to mounting pressure from farmers, President Donald Trump proposed a new idea on Tuesday to address the crisis. Speaking to the media after touring “Alligator Alcatraz,” a new migrant detention facility in Florida, Trump said he is considering a new type of work permit for undocumented immigrants already in the U.S.
“We’re going to issue a form of a card or document, and the farmers are going to be responsible for these people. They’re not going to have citizenship, but they’ll be working. They’ll be paying taxes,” Trump told reporters.
Boelts said this kind of policy shift—allowing undocumented immigrants to legally work and reforming the existing H-2A system—is urgently needed.
“These are just hardworking folks trying to make a better life for themselves and their family. We need to address that,” he said. “We need to design a simple, affordable, and viable seasonal and year-round program for agriculture.”
