The Securing Agriculture’s Workforce Act provides a vital legislative path to resolve decades-long labor shortages confronting American farms and ranches, according to commentary highlighted by Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association and Chair of the American Business Immigration Coalition’s Ag Council. Addressing the measure introduced by House Agriculture Committee Chairman G.T. Thompson, Teagarden outlined how workforce availability directly impacts both national food security and domestic supply chain resilience.
“What I would call the biggest problem in agriculture today, and that is the workforce needs and the inability to secure the workforce that we need in agriculture,” Teagarden said. “And so it really is a food security, national security issue. It really addresses the key issues head-on for agriculture.”
A central element of the legislation is modernizing the federal H-2A guest worker program to meet the needs of livestock producers who require year-round labor rather than seasonal coverage.
“When we talk about the H-2A program, that’s a seasonal guest worker program that meets the needs of many parts of agriculture in the U.S., but not livestock production,” Teagarden said. “Our work in feedyards, and dairies, and ranches—it is not seasonal. It’s every day, year-round. And so the legislation includes the opportunity to include year-round work in the H-2A program. And that’s something that we’ve been asking for for years, a key component of the reform that we need in our immigration, labor, and workforce system.”
The proposed measure also creates a framework to vet and grant legal work authorization to long-term agricultural laborers currently working on domestic operations.
“The other piece that is equally important is the opportunity that our existing workforce can be vetted and determined that they’ve been productive members, good members of our communities, have been working hard, paying taxes, doing the work that, frankly, many folks aren’t willing to do,” Teagarden said. “We have an opportunity to add those individuals to the H-2A program and get them full, legal work authorization. These are folks that have been part of these operations for years and years and years, and been in these communities for years, and we really need to address this issue and provide them an opportunity to get legal.”
Support for Chairman Thompson’s bill remains strong across diverse agricultural sectors, despite pushback from political opponents advocating for mass deportations.
“Multiple ag segments across the country have been very supportive—nearly unanimous support for this bill and the approach that Chairman Thompson has taken here,” Teagarden noted. “The other side, though, would be that when the bill was introduced, we saw the typical attacks from some folks in D.C. and maybe particularly online, who oppose any kind of approach that doesn’t result in every immigrant being deported. I think they’re just detached from reality, in part, of circumstances across the country in rural America that think that we could sustain our ability to feed ourselves that we have here if we deported all of these immigrants.”
Without statutory workforce reform, the economic fallout is expected to reach grocery store shelves quickly through reduced domestic production and higher consumer prices.
“If we are unable to produce the food and have the staff that we need on these operations, we’re going to see food prices increase, and a greater reliance on imported food,” Teagarden warned. “Not that we’re saying we shouldn’t import any food, but you have that balance that we need to strike from a food security, national security standpoint. But then also disrupting families and communities and businesses that this mass deportation approach would create.”
Recent enforcement activities in southwest Kansas demonstrated how labor disruptions ripple through agricultural supply chains, where heightened scrutiny caused workers to stay home out of fear. The resulting labor shortage led to lost wages, operational downtime, and beef processing delays that keep retail food costs high for consumers.
