Washington, D.C. — Today, in a speech on the Senate floor, Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet urged his colleagues to act on the agricultural workforce labor crisis affecting family farms and ranches in Colorado and across the nation, and to pass his legislation to reform the H-2A visa program, provide farm workers with certainty, lower food prices for American families, and secure our nation’s food supply.
“Today, America’s farmers and ranchers are short more than 100,000 workers — all across this country – to plant seeds, to pick berries, to raise cattle, and do the hard, essential work of feeding this country,” said Bennet in his speech. “It’s why growers all across America are banging down the doors of this Capitol, pleading with us, to fix the broken H-2A system for farm workers. It is obvious to everybody — who’s had anything to do with this system – that it’s completely broken. There is no argument that could be made that it’s not.”
Over the last year, rising food costs driven in part by a shortage of skilled farm labor have strained family budgets. Last week, Bennet led bipartisan Members of Congress, farm workers, immigration advocates, and agricultural leaders in urging action on his Affordable and Secure Food Act to address this crisis and bring certainty to family farmers and farm workers who help feed Americans every day. This bill is supported by a broad coalition of labor and immigration advocates and agricultural industry leaders and producers, who have long called for common-sense immigration reform to support our nation’s agricultural economy.
“We don’t have to accept hundreds of thousands of people living in the shadows, when they work every single day — they’re breaking their backs, and I don’t use that term lightly, working in some of the worst conditions that there are to work in – to feed the American people. To give us economic security and food security and provide for our national security,” said Bennet. “And we shouldn’t accept crushing food prices for families just because this Congress can’t reform an antiquated H-2A program. And we can do something about this this week before we go home with this proposal.”
Bennet’s full speech is available HERE.