The U.S. Peanut Federation has been working with the chairman of the House Ag Committee on the labor legislation that will provide some help at the farm level or all across the industry.
It’s called the Securing Ag Workforce Act, which addresses key challenges for the peanut industry, such as broadening eligible H-2A activities to include the following key industry activities, including handling, planting, drying, packaging peanuts, processing, freezing, or grading of any ag or agricultural commodity to bring in some help from other countries for processing of the first marketing division of a commodity, also to eliminate mid-track wage adjustments along the way, stop that, placing the annual limits on adverse effect wage rates, and also mandating the creation of a single online filing platform where applications, petitions, and other requests make it simple, including waiver authority, allowing certain experienced ag workers that’s already in the U.S. to obtain a H-2A status and participate in the program. That’s just a few of the items that we’re requesting that Chairman Thompson can get into this bill, and it’ll be more helpful to farmers all across the nation.
Audio Reporting by Tyron Spearman for Southeast AgNet.