Dairy farmers could get help with the longtime workforce shortage problem from new changes to the U.S. Department of Labor’s H-2A program that gets rid of the seasonal workforce stipulation.
The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act of 2026, introduced June 30 by U.S. House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., would remove the seasonal work requirement that has left dairy farmers unable to use the program for labor.
“The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act represents the most significant reform to the ag workforce we’ve seen in decades. It is particularly critical for dairy farmers, who have been effectively shut out of the nation’s primary legal agricultural guestworker program,” said National Milk Producers Federation President Gregg Doud, in a statement.
The dairy industry has struggled with labor shortages for decades. In the past 20 years, 60% — over 38,000 — U.S. dairy farms have closed, in part because of a lack of farm labor, according to Dennis Rodenbaugh, president and CEO of the Dairy Farmers of America.
The H-2A program, enacted in 1987, allows non-immigrant workers to come to the United States to perform agricultural services for up to 10 months as temporary and seasonal workers.
While the program has long benefited produce operations, farms that require around-the-clock labor (like dairy farms) have long been unable to use the program, exacerbating the labor shortages in these sectors.
“The lack of available labor is among the largest limiting factors of American agriculture,” said American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall.
According to Duvall, only 182 domestic applications were submitted for roughly 415,000 advertised farm labor positions in 2025.
“If Americans won’t apply for these jobs, we have no other choice but to depend on the H-2A program,” he said.
The bill further clarifies that “temporary work” is determined by the length of a job contract that can be up to 350 days.
The proposed bill would also address another long-held complaint regarding how H-2A workers are paid, known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, the minimum rate an employer must pay a worker.
In the past, the AEWR has been calculated by the USDA’s Farm Labor Report, which has led to a wage rate that has outpaced general inflation by over 70% since 2010, according to the bill, making H-2A labor more expensive each year to hire.
The U.S. Department of Labor changed how this is determined in October, with wages now being based on state-level wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics.
The bill further cements these changes by limiting wage rate fluctuations to not exceed 3.5% increase or a 1.5% decrease; on average, AEWR rose 4.5% from 2024 to 2025, according to AFBF.
The bill is currently being reviewed in the House Agriculture Committee.
