Florida Farms Pinched by Labor Shortage
Local News Staff 
You wouldn't know it from recent protest of legal migrant workers, but the demand for farm labor has only increased. Local business owners say most Americans seek to avoid the type of intensive labor conducted by temporary migrant workers. Many local owners contract with the H-2A visa program to bring labor in from Mexico and Central America. The visa is reserved for temporary agriculture workers, who are brought to the US for up to 10 months to plant and harvest crops at various farms before heading home to rest.
In a recent interview with Channel 9 News, Southern Hill Farms director of operations Kyle Hill explained: “They’re great guys who are always in good spirits, work very hard, appreciative of what they’re doing, and they are an absolute necessity to our business.”
“It’s not cheap. It’s not a cheap process at all,” Hill said. “It’s pretty much all we all we can do because we can’t find the work here.”
In 2017, farms applied for 200,000 migrant positions across the United States. The number has been steadily rising, to 318,000 positions in 2021.
