a day ago
Weber County farmers hope to see immigration reform for agriculture workers
On Thursday, President Donald Trump said immigration policies are hurting the agriculture industry and that changes are coming. In Weber County, some farmers hope to see major changes.
Ronald Stratford is a fourth-generation dairy farmer. 'I'm kind of a hobby farmer these days,' he told ABC4.
He used to have 600 dairy cows. His family had been doing that for 65 years. However, these days the dairy cows are gone. In their place, 40 head that he's raising for meat. 'Semi-retired if you want to call it that but I don't know if this time of year that applies at all,' he added.'
Currently, he has a couple of part-time employees. 'We had four full-time employees and my brother and me,' he said talking about staffing when the farm had dairy cows. 'It was a full-time job 24/7, 365.'
As a farmer and the president of Utah Farmers Union, watching ICE raids at farms in other states has him worried. 'It's devastating,' he stated. 'If we lose the immigrant labor, I don't know how they'll survive.'
Stratford said it is often hard to find employees, so farmers hire who the can. He often hired migrant workers throughout the years. They would show him identification before being hired. 'I would probably be foolish to think that not all of those guys had legal papers, but they do now,' he added. 'The work they did for me was essential. I couldn't have run this business without them.' He said those who worked for him were always hardworking, frugal, and family-oriented.
He hopes there will be reform to allow those who've been working in the states to gain legal status, and help farmers hire year-round migrant workers.
'There is no federal program for a dairyman to hire the help that he needs,' Stratford stated. 'There is the H2A program which is seasonal workers only. Dairy is not seasonal.'
A few miles away, Ogden Bay Produce uses the H2A visa program.
'Once we do all that paperwork and prove that there's that need,' owner and operator Matt Peterson told ABC4. 'We advertise and prove that no local citizens will want to apply for that position. Then the government will give us a number of worker visas.'
Peterson said they fill about two thirds of their 30 seasonal employee positions this way. The visa allows the worker to stay from a few weeks to a few months. The longest any of Peterson's workers were able to stay was seven months.
'It's nice to know that these guys' whole purpose of being in our country is to work for me,' Peterson said. 'That's kind of some nice security to know.'
Without the program, it would be impossible to run the farm's 170 acres because much of the produce they grow must be harvested by hand. 'But it's not a perfect program,' Peterson added. 'It's incredibly expensive for me as an operator to implement it.'
Peterson explained that he provides the workers with housing, covers all travel costs to bring the workers to Utah and then to send them to Mexico when their visa is up, and the federal government sets the wage he pays them. He said this often puts a squeeze on farms, which then causes their prices to increase.
'I think all of the programs need to be reformed and make it easier for the farmers to get these workers up when we need them,' said Peterson. 'And then the guys that are here locally that want to work and have lived the majority of their lives here in Utah or America, who aren't documented and want to work, it's really difficult for them.'
He echoed Stratford in naming the strong values his employees demonstrate, and said many of them have become some of his best friends.
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