Sometimes from our corner of the world in Southwest Virginia, it seems like Richmond is moving further and further away from understanding how the policies our legislature enacts affect us here on this side of the Blue Ridge and throughout the rural parts of the Commonwealth. Oftentimes, policies that might make sense or work in a place like Northern Virginia do not necessarily make sense here in Southwest Virginia. This General Assembly session, this includes the debates about the minimum wage, and especially the agricultural and foreign worker exemptions.
The agriculture industry has changed dramatically since the farmworker exemption was enacted, and while this exemption certainly has a history that no Virginian should be proud of, the legislature has considered its utility again and again over the years and determined that it should remain. We fear now that although this policy’s efficacy has not changed, the General Assembly’s view of it is about to. There are currently bills to both increase Virginia’s minimum wage and to remove these crucial exemptions.
Here in 2024, labor is persistently the limiting factor for our agricultural businesses. Labor shortages impede our ability to meet our land’s potential, our technology’s potential, and the next generation’s aspirational prospects. Not having the help we need prevents our industry from growing with the changing landscape of our communities and keeps our forests and farmlands from providing the kind of incentives we need to recruit the next generation that will carry on the important work of feeding our country.
We are constantly pressured from outside forces to break up our farms, sell our land for development, and do more while using less — be it land, water, materials, and now labor.
Working on the farm has long been a valuable opportunity for Americans just entering the workforce. As agriculture and forestry have lost their footprint in many of our communities across the commonwealth, we have seen a concurrent decrease in awareness of our business, leading to policy recommendations that stand to cripple our industry and irrevocably strip away the incentives to grow food on what open green space we still have left. This lost interest regularly leads to a pivot to other uses of our land, such as solar sites and data centers. With this change, our communities lose the economic and environmental benefits our farms and forests provide.
The existing minimum wage language, and specifically the agricultural exemptions, give our industry’s food producers the flexibility to create varied employment opportunities that will not be feasible otherwise. These options include transportation, on-site housing, profit sharing, educational opportunities, certifications, meals, or after school employment options for the next generation. By standardizing the compensation model our state leaders are putting Viginia’s food production system at a competitive disadvantage to our neighboring states, creating a situation that cannot be corrected five or ten years from now when the evidence is impossible to ignore. Even states such as California and New York recognize this and set different, regional wages for agricultural workers, especially because of the impacts a prevailing wage have on what the federal government requires our farms to pay temporary foreign workers who come here to provide essential help cultivating and harvesting crops.
My business is located just a few miles from the North Carolina border, and we buy produce from farms in several surrounding states. I see firsthand how policies enacted in each of them impact our growers. Raising the minimum wage in Virginia and removing our farmworker exemptions will put more Virginia farms at a competitive disadvantage and only serve to amplify the problems I mentioned above. This also recognizes what should be patently obvious: that the cost of living in rural areas is vastly different than those in more urban settings. Treating businesses in Southwest Virginia the same as Northern Virginia or Hampton Roads will make it that much harder for us to operate.
Once the damage is done, these small family operations will be forced to liquidate the last resource available to them, the land they work. Our arable farmland, once it is dispersed to developers, can never be brought back into production. Even our new controlled environment agricultural facilities, which have been aggressively recruited to provide new opportunities here in the commonwealth, will be hard pressed to invest here in the future in the face of these non-competitive business practices.
Everyone that has spent time on a farm knows that “many hands make light work,” but repealing the agricultural worker exemptions to our minimum wage laws, coupled with our minimum wage being two times the federal requirement, only serves to tie those hands behind the backs of employers and producers.
Moir Beamer is CEO of Virginia Produce Company in Hillsville and member of the Virginia Agribusiness Council.
