America’s farmers, ranchers and growers must have access to a stable supply of legal labor and AFBF said it is encouraged with the general direction of two proposals issued by the Bush administration.
   AFBF President Bob Stallman said the organization is evaluating the more than 200 pages of proposed reforms to streamline the H-2A guest worker program that were unveiled by the departments of Labor and Homeland Security.
   “Agricultural labor, the H-2A program in particular, is an extremely complicated system with numerous issues that need to be balanced,” Stallman said. “We are encouraged by the effort to come up with changes that will help farmers secure a dependable workforce for American agriculture – a task that grows in importance with each passing day.”
   Stallman said that “with the overall lack of availability of an existing domestic workforce willing to tackle the hard work required by agriculture, as well as the crackdown on unauthorized workers, having a workable H-2A guest worker program is more critical than ever.”
   Stallman said he was encouraged that the Department of Labor proposal “might move closer to a market-based wage for the program,” instead of mandating the existing adverse effect wage rate.
   “The adverse effect wage rate is a terrible disincentive to the current program, and one of its greatest impediments,” Stallman said. “A farm labor wage that is more market-based could be a real plus.”
   Stallman pointed out that there still is room for improvement in the proposals.  He said there is not much relief included for the dairy sector because those operations do not quality under existing H-2A rules.
   “For some pretty wide segments of agriculture, where the work is more long- erm, we still need a legislative solution,” Stallman said. “Some of the elements of AgJOBS bill would go to the heart of that problem, which is why we’ve consistently tried to keep that legislation moving and improve it. If you married some of the H-2A reforms being proposed today with other elements in AgJOBS, I think we might have solved a lot of the problems we’re facing.”