California Farmers Fed Up with Federal Wage Rules – San Diego Union-Tribune

California has a reputation for hostile regulatory and tax policies. Look no further than the new $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food restaurants. The policy has already forced restaurants to raise prices, lay off workers and close stores — resulting in about 10,000 newly unemployed Californians.

But not all threats come from Sacramento. My family’s tomato farm in Oceanside is struggling with government red tape from the U.S. Department of Labor thousands of miles away. Federal policymakers need to rethink the regulatory status quo. Or farms like mine, which have been passed down through generations for more than 80 years, will disappear, threatening the nation’s food supply.

It’s a troubling reality that’s already starting to set in. Since 2017, the number of farms in California has fallen by 10 percent. And the state is losing 50,000 acres of farmland a year, according to the California Department of Conservation.

At the heart of the problem is federal wage regulation, which puts farmers at a significant competitive disadvantage compared to foreign competitors.

California growers are increasingly relying on the federal H-2A program, a temporary visa path that’s specific to the agriculture industry. At its core, the program is a win-win. It gives immigrants who are here legally — and pass thorough background checks — economic opportunities while also helping fill farm jobs that local Californians are reluctant to take.

This dynamic is especially true on my family’s farm. Preparing fields, transplanting seedlings, tending to plants, and picking tomatoes from the field to deliver the final product to the table is no walk in the park. It requires a hard day’s work and is not a task that someone born and raised in a stereotypical Southern California lifestyle would be eager to do.

This is where the shenanigans of federal regulators in Washington come into play. They require California farms to pay these guest workers, or any local farmworker doing similar work, an hourly rate of nearly $20 an hour. While similar to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s failed experiment with fast-food wages, the economic situation for farm businesses in this case is even worse. My family’s tomatoes must compete directly with produce from Canada or Mexico in the grocery aisle.

Tomatoes don’t magically appear on store shelves; they come from hard-working farmers. The amount of time and labor that goes into producing food in this country often goes unnoticed.

And when California farmers are required to pay wages that are significantly higher than in British Columbia, or more than 10 times higher than our neighbors to the south, local growers lose out. Higher labor costs translate into higher prices for consumers, which encourages buyers to buy imported produce from abroad rather than from the fields of the Golden State.

Federal wage mandates are out of place for California farmers because rates are set centrally, completely divorced from market realities. The wage equation also has a built-in escalator that artificially raises earnings levels over time—leaving growers with increasingly worse financial consequences.

The consequences of undermining local agriculture extend far beyond farming communities. The nation’s food supply is threatened as the availability of domestically produced produce declines and dependence on imported food increases. Given the geopolitical instability around the world, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario in which our historically stable food supply collapses.

If federal policymakers don’t fix the regulatory barriers farmers currently face, California’s farming community will suffocate. Family farms like mine need help now.

Singh is the director of human resources at West Coast Tomato Growers and lives in San Diego County.

Originally published: August 5, 2024 at 4:00 PM