Vermont farmworkers could earn significantly lower wages this year under new federal rules, a shift that could affect more than 100 workers hoping to find jobs in the state this spring.
The farmworker wages fall under a federal program administered by the Department of Labor called H-2A, a temporary visa status for agricultural workers who come to the United States and stay for up to 10 months. The program has been around since the 1950s as a way for farmers to legally hire needed foreign workers.
Under the new rules, which were adopted by the U.S. Labor Department in October, employers will be allowed to lower wages from previous years and also deduct a portion of housing costs from H-2A workers wages, according to the rule. Farmers could save an annual average of $2.4 billion over the next decade, or $5,500 per worker, according to the rule.
Some Vermont farmers who advertised lower wages on their requests for jobs under the program told VTDigger they still planned to pay returning workers as much or more than they made last year, emphasizing their reliance upon H-2A workers, largely from Jamaica, who’ve returned for years if not decades.
“The morale of the bunkhouse and the morale of the workers is really important, and it would be deflating to see their wage go down,” said Barney Hodges, co-owner of Sunrise Orchards in Cornwall. “I think it would have a very negative effect on productivity.”
The change comes as Vermont farms finalize hiring decisions that shape who fills essential agricultural jobs and at what cost. Labor advocates warn the change could accelerate a race to the bottom in an already fragile workforce, while state officials argue the flexibility could keep farms afloat. The outcome has implications beyond the fields, affecting food prices, worker housing stability and the long-term viability of an industry central to Vermont’s economy and landscape.
“We expect what we’re going to see is an increase in the H-2A workforce and a decrease in everyone’s wages, which is obviously bad for everyone involved except the growers themselves,” said Antonio De Loera-Brust, communications director for United Farm Workers of America, a farm labor organization that filed a lawsuit against the new rule in November.
The changes impact the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, or the minimum hourly wage employers have to pay H-2A workers to prevent them from inadvertently lowering the pay of U.S. farmworkers — those who are citizens or legal permanent residents. Along with wages, employers must provide a kitchen to cook in and free transportation between their housing and their work site.
Vermont’s House Committee on Agriculture, Food Resiliency, and Forestry plans to take testimony from the state Labor Department on the wage change on Thursday, but it’s not clear what the state can do to offset it.
Sen. Joe Major, D-Windsor, vice chair of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, said in an email that the legislature could look to complementary actions like investments in farmworker housing, access to health care, workforce protections, and programs stabilizing farm income “so that the burden of federal policy changes doesn’t fall entirely on workers or farmers,” Major said.
Last year, all H-2A jobs paid $18.83 per hour. This year, the majority of Vermont farms that have posted H-2A jobs by the end of January advertised the lowered starting wage for this year of $15.96 an hour, sometimes including a housing deduction of $1.61 an hour. For higher-skilled workers, or those with two or more months of experience, the wage is $19.23 per hour, or $17.42 after the housing deduction. Virtually all H-2A workers require housing.
Vermont farmers advertised 836 H-2A jobs on more than 80 farms in 2025. This spring, at least 112 workers could be affected, according to a count by VTDigger of job listings so far, with many more likely to come.
Pay day dilemma
At her organic vegetable farm in Jericho, Christa Alexander has hired H-2A workers for eight years and plans to hire four Jamaican workers this season. While her official job listing for Jericho Settlers Farm lists a wage of $15.96, that wage reflects a lower skill level. Her returning farmworkers will take home a bit more than the $18.83 they were paid last year. Those workers have “really transformed the labor situation on our farm,” Alexander said, because they return with needed skills, and they’re available, while many U.S. farmworkers have disappeared, farmers told VTDigger.
Over the last decade, the H-2A program has ballooned nationally, growing 185%, according to the American Farm Bureau, an agricultural advocacy group that supports the new wages. More than 415,000 H-2A positions were requested last year, a new record.
“Growers have been and continue to be under significant financial pressure and this change allows them flexibility in pay so they can pay based on years of experience,” said Alyson Eastman, deputy secretary for Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food, and Markets. The H-2A wage rule, known as AEWR, increased by 32% between 2000 to 2025, Eastman said. She said she believes the change was positive for both workers and employers.
Some farm owners say they worry about pay discrepancies cropping up under the new rule, which would make it harder to ensure fair wages in the state. Hodges, of Sunrise Orchards, said he’d talked to a few other growers via text but that there was no organized effort to get on the same page about how growers planned to handle changed rates.
“It does seem a little strange that the federal government is giving people an option. It makes it more confusing,” Hodges said. He’s hired H-2A workers from Jamaica since 1987, and some have been with him for almost 40 years.
Even though times are tough — he faced two weather events, a frost in 2023 and the drought in 2025, that each damaged half his crop — he planned to maintain workers’ prior wages. Other farmers who spoke to VTDigger for this story described approaches that varied based on margins, scale and philosophy. Zachary Suddaby, of Suddabee’s Honey, for example, said it would feel like an insult to drop the pay for two women from South Africa who work on his farm.
Others worried about the impact this could have nationally if larger operations outside Vermont significantly dropped their wages.
“The cost of production could go way down for larger-scale operations,” said John Wagner, of Bear Roots Farm, “whereas in our case we feel a personal responsibility to pay these guys a decent wage.”
“We were going broke”
But not every farmer shares, or can afford, that goal. At Singing Cedars Apiaries, a beekeeping operation in Benson, Deborah Smith said in an email that she planned to pay the $17.62 rate for returning H-2A workers, including the housing deduction of $1.61 an hour.
“We were going broke paying the higher rate,” Smith said in an email.
“Our employees have been very good workers,” Smith said. “They are like family to us. But this arrangement has to be a good deal for us and a good deal for them. And farming is very marginal.”
While the state said H-2A housing faces inspections, the new rule provides the deduction without requiring improved housing standards. In 2024, 4 Corners Farm in Newbury was penalized by the Vermont Department of Labor for unsanitary cooking conditions and fined $3,457. WhatsApp images included in the complaint show a common space cordoned off by blankets for bedrooms, with at least one person sleeping on what appeared to be a sofa, according to images obtained through an open records request.
In 2026, 10 farmworkers at 4 Corners could make $14.42 an hour, $4.41 an hour less than they made in 2025. The farm did not respond to a request for comment on their job order.
“If the government allowed these deductions, they should also audit and check on housing,” said Cesar Escalante, professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Georgia. “Only those implementing acceptable housing services should be getting those deductions.”
Budget cuts at the Labor Department lowered the agency’s capacity to regulate safe housing, Escalante said. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog, found in 2024 that 84% of investigations conducted by federal regulators found at least one or more violations of the rules created to protect H-2A workers.
Price of lower pay
Major, the state senator, said a lower rate can put pressure on household income at a time when housing, food and transportation costs remain high in Vermont.
Before these jobs are offered to foreign applicants, domestic workers have first right of refusal for a farmworker position. But only 182 positions, less than one-half of 1% of all positions, had a domestic applicant last year, according to the farm bureau. The Department of Labor, which administers the H-2A program, bypassed typical rule-making procedures in October, claiming increasing immigration enforcement could lead to a labor shortage.
“That’s a concern, especially given how essential these workers are to the viability of our agricultural economy,” Major said. But he added that farms operating on thin margins see labor costs as one of their biggest challenges, and for some farms the option to reduce wages could help keep operations afloat.
Rep. David Durfee, D-Shaftsbury and chair of the committee hearing testimony last week, said it’s hard to imagine the actual wages could have gone down so much in a year.
“It’s probably a net benefit for employers if they’re not paying as much,” Durfee said, “but will farmworkers be willing to come and do the work if it’s that kind of pay cut?”
