Farms.com Home   News

AFBF to Wall Street Journal: Strong Farms Start with Legal Foreign Workforce

There are serious consequences to not fixing the agriculture labor crisis. Many farmers simply couldn’t produce the food we all enjoy without a labor force. American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall explained the implications in a letter to the editor published in the Wall Street Journal.

President Duvall wrote, "The Labor Department acknowledges a reality that the political extremes willfully ignore: Americans prefer other jobs over the hard work of farming. As a requirement of visa programs, farmers must advertise their available jobs, but fewer than 1% are ever filled by an American. Thousands of positions go unfilled, which means apples go unpicked and tomatoes rot in fields.

Click here to see more...

Trending Video

Drought, Floods & Rising Costs — Burke County's Idlewood Farms Is Rolling With the Punches

Video: Drought, Floods & Rising Costs — Burke County's Idlewood Farms Is Rolling With the Punches

For brothers Robert and Sid Prescott of Idlewood Farms in Burke County, 2026 hasn't felt like farming — it's felt like survival. Reporting from Waynesboro, John Holcomb visits the Prescott's 850-acre Bermuda grass and beef cattle operation to hear firsthand how one of the most unpredictable seasons in recent memory is testing everything they've built.