Straight Talk: Is H-2A Working Out in the Vineyard?
March 6, 2023 The Eastern Viticulture and Enology Forum, a webinar series presented by Penn State Extension and Cornell and Virginia Tech universities, recently addressed the H-2A temporary agricultural guestworker program, which allows U.S. farmers to fill employment gaps by hiring workers from other countries.
“There’s a lot to H-2A. There’s no doubt it’s complex,” Richard Stup, an Agricultural Workforce Specialist with Cornell, says. “I’ve worked with a number of growers who have started into the H-2A program, and typically I hear from experienced people that it takes two or three years to really understand the program fully and move forward and really feel like you have a strong grasp of it.”
Three such growers — Andrew Knight, Owner of Knight Vineyards in Ripley, NY; Tom Higgins, Co-Owner of Heart and Hands Wine Co. in Union Springs, NY; and Galen Troxell, Co-Owner of Galen Glen Vineyards in Andreas, PA — comprised a panel that spoke to the following issues:
Why H-2A?
Knight: “Our main purpose is for pruning, trellising — you know, the winter work. Our contract runs from November to May, almost a seven-month job order. Our first one started in 2019, so we are just now starting our fourth contract. What made us get into it was the lack of labor here. As transportation costs got higher, the migrant workforce that was here didn’t want to travel 30 to 40 minutes every day. And then they would get here, and you’d have a bad weather day. So, it wasn’t rosy to go to where we were, and it just got worse and worse and worse. We were hiring anybody that would show up, and you’d get a van full of employees, and one or two guys knew something about pruning, and everybody else was cutting some and leaving some. It got to the point where we were not able to grow our business anymore just on the basis we didn’t have a steady workforce to do this pruning labor.”
Higgins: “We started farm labor contracts for a few years, and in the last year, 2019, the head of the crew comes to me and tells me that the guy down the road was paying their crew in cash, and that if we didn’t pay him in cash, which would be outside the bounds of the contract, he wouldn’t work for us. I was pulling my hair out because this was just before harvest. I said we have to figure out another means because this is not going to work for us long term.”
What initial hurdles did you experience?
Knight: “There are multiple ways to go through that first application process. I decided that I’m not willing to take a lot of my time to do this, so we hired an agency to do it. There are numerous agencies that will help you. It’s not inexpensive by any means, but I felt I had better use of my time. This is what they do day in and day out. That first year is you just writing checks for things. You have no idea whether this is all going to work out or not. I think that was the hardest thing.”
Troxell: “We started last year. One of our biggest challenges was just getting started out. Our application got hung up at USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] for nine weeks. So, it wasn’t a great entry into the program. We were shooting for March 15 to Oct. 15, predominantly the growing season. We weren’t sure what level of skill we could expect, so we were unwilling to let people make pruning cuts. My daughter and I know how to do that. We’d bring them in to do pulling, and tying, and things like that. Unfortunately, they didn’t do any pulling and tying. We did. So, I would say we spent the entire year doing a bit of catch up. [But] the productivity of the workers that come in is dramatically better. If you’re looking at cost per output, it was a win for us. The other thing that was really nice about it was that they didn’t leave. They do live in the farmhouse on the property, so you didn’t have all the challenges of not showing up for work. There wasn’t a transportation challenge, and there wasn’t a ‘dog ate my homework’ challenge.”
How big is the issue of housing?
Troxell: “I am in the process of building a new facility. I am a proponent enough that there’s some advantages to doing a true facility for this. I wouldn’t want to live for seven months with somebody in a bedroom. If you provide housing that’s good, comfortable, and adequate, your employees are going to be more inclined to give you a good, long, hard day’s work. If they’re going back to something where it’s cold or drafty or it’s a terrible rat’s nest to live in, you’re probably not going to get that productivity.”
Do workers return year to year?
Higgins: “It’s essentially been the same crew, with a couple new faces just because it has grown from the original eight. It’s actually a core family. That’s a wonderful structure to have, when you’ve got a father and a couple of sons and a cousin.”
Do workers return year to year?
Knight: “This is really the No. 1 reason that I think H-2A pays for itself for us. We have gotten the same crew back every single year. Has anybody thought about the cost of training people? Whoever’s training is usually getting paid a lot of money. It is fantastic to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go do this job today,’ and they know exactly what they’re doing. They know where the tools are at. They know what they need to do. That value, I can’t put a number on it.”
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