Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the U.S. Custom Grain and Forage Harvesting Labor Supply and 2020 Harvest

ABSTRACT

The global coronavirus pandemic disrupted migratory labor worldwide in 2020, including foreign seasonal labor that travels to the United States to work on mobile custom grain and forage harvesting crews, which operate primarily in Great Plains states. In response to the pandemic, the United States suspended the processing of H-2A and J-1 visas, which foreign workers use for these jobs, and prohibited travel from labor-sending countries. Many transnational workers were delayed or prevented from traveling to jobs that require training before the harvest begins in April or May, creating a critical situation for the owners of these operations in moving their equipment to the fields and having enough workers to harvest the crops in the usual time frame. The J-1 visa process is administered by the U.S. Department of State while the H-2A visa process is more complex and administered by the U.S. public employment service and other federal agencies. Wheat harvest labor problems in the Great Plains played a significant role in the development of the DOL and other federal, state, and local government agencies that would form the U.S. public employment service in the United States in the early twentieth century. The custom harvesting industry now uses the public employment service to hire foreign labor through the H-2A visa program. This research uses information gathered from custom harvesting employers and a private labor agency in Britain to determine how these disruptions affected the 2020 labor supply and harvest. Survey respondents had planned to hire more than half of their workers from foreign countries in 2020, causing significant problems in finding enough domestic workers to replace those unable to travel. Many custom harvesters have downsized their operations due to labor problems, which raises the issue of whether the public employment services of countries involved need to adapt once again to changing labor conditions. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.