Mandated Wage Hikes Imperil Disappearing Family Farms, Panel Is Told

There are 544,000 fewer farms in the United States than there were in 1980 and more than 151 million acres formerly tilled are no longer producing commercial crops. There are myriad reasons why, but among most prominent—especially for the nation’s disappearing small family farms—is labor costs. At least two bills matriculating through committees, including one already adopted by the House twice, seek to pause farmworker wage hikes mandated by the Department of Labor’s (DOL) National Farmworker Jobs Program and shift salary scaling instead to the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Labor Survey. During a three-hour March 21 hearing on USDA’s $25.1 billion Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) budget request, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said he supports the proposals but doesn’t see an issue with the National Agricultural Statistics Service’s data being used by DOL’s Wage and Hour Division to set farmworker pay standards under the Fair Labor Standards Act....