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Farm Labor Coordination


People working in a field

The Farmworker Coordinator serves as a liaison for USDA and farmworkers. Working in collaboration with federal and state agencies, community-based organizations and other stakeholders, the coordinator identifies challenges faced by farmworker communities to better support hired labor vital to U.S. agriculture.

According to the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), hired farmworkers make up less than 1 percent of all U.S. wage and salary workers, but they play an essential role in U.S. agriculture. Hired farmworkers are found in a variety of occupations, including field crop workers, nursery workers, livestock workers, graders and sorters, agricultural inspectors, supervisors and hired farm managers. The majority are wage and salary workers hired directly by farmers, but some are employees of agricultural service companies, including farm labor contractors, custom harvest providers, and management service providers. Many industry-wide employment estimates also include support personnel on farms, such as human resource managers, sales agents and truck drivers.

Workers under the H-2A Program

The H-2A Visa Program helps American farmers meet their labor needs. Employers in the H-2A program must demonstrate, and the U.S. Department of Labor must certify, that efforts to recruit U.S. workers were not successful. According to an ERS report, one of the clearest indicators of the scarcity of farm labor is the fact that the number of H-2A positions requested and approved has increased more than seven-fold in the past 18 years.

  • The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services maintains updates for workers under the H-2A Program.
  • The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides an overview of the H-2A Program at farmers.gov.

Resources for Migrant and Seasonal Workers and Employers

  • The Department of Labor has created a Guide that provides agricultural employers with basic information on federal labor law.
  • Prevention of heat stress in workers is important. Employers should provide training to workers so they understand what heat stress is, how it affects their health and safety, and how it can be prevented. The Occupational Safety and Administration (OSHA) provides information about heat hazards and provides resources to keep workers safe in its Heat Illness Prevention for employers and workers.
  • The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) provides information about the definition of a pesticide handler as well as steps employers can take to ensure worker safety.

Avian Influenza A(H5N1) Virus

The detections of avian influenza A(H5) viruses in wild birds, poultry, some mammals, and in people in the United States do not change the risk to the general public’s health, which the Center for Disease Control considers to be low. However, due to outbreaks in domestic commercial and backyard poultry flocks, as well as infections in wild birds and some mammals, some groups of people with job-related or recreational exposures to birds or other H5 virus-infected animals are at greater risk of infection. People with job-related or recreational exposures to birds or infected mammals should take appropriate precautions to protect against bird flu.

The National Center for Farmworker Health is collaborating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address the threat of H5N1 bird flu among animal production workers, in addition to continuing to support work on preventing and mitigating seasonal flu and COVID-19 among farmworkers nationally. NCFH has a number of existing resources that can help health departments and farmworker-serving organizations learn more about animal production workers and plan and implement their bird flu response.

The federal Migrant Health Program provides funds to health centers located around the country to provide health care to nearly 800,000 farmworkers and their families every year.

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