Who Is Picking Your Strawberries This Year?

The price of fresh strawberries and asparagus is closely tied to the rising cost of farm labor. We explore the H-2A visa program and how changes are impacting y

By Foodie Pundit Newsroom - Published 2026-11-03 - Updated 2026-11-03 - Section: Grocery Cpg

Key points

Expect continued price volatility and higher grocery bills for hand-harvested produce like berries, asparagus, and tree fruits due to rising farm labor costs.
The variety of American-grown produce could shrink as farmers switch to less labor-intensive crops to remain profitable, leading to more imports.
The H-2A visa program, while essential for harvesting, is creating an economic squeeze on farms, caught between mandated wages and price pressure from retailers.
While agricultural automation and robotics offer a long-term solution, they are not yet a viable or affordable option for many farms facing immediate cost crises.

A clamshell of perfect, ruby-red strawberries sits under the cool fluorescent lights of the produce section. It is February. Outside, a Midwest city is frozen, but here, it is perpetually harvest time. The price tag, maybe $5.99, maybe $7.99, elicits a brief moment of consideration. Is it worth it? That question, however, overlooks a more fundamental one: how did these strawberries get here?

The journey of that single package of berries from a sun-drenched field to your shopping cart is a marvel of modern logistics, a complex chain of harvesting, cooling, packing, and shipping. Yet the most critical link in that chain, the one that is currently under unprecedented strain, is also the most invisible. It is the human hands that gently pluck the delicate fruit from the plant.

For decades, a significant portion of those hands have belonged to seasonal guest workers arriving in the United States through the H-2A visa program. They are the engine in the fields, the temporary labor force that makes the year-round abundance of American produce possible. But that engine is beginning to run hot, squeezed by economic forces and policy shifts that are fundamentally altering the calculus of farming.

The repercussions are no longer confined to rural communities or agricultural balance sheets. They are rippling outward, and they are about to land squarely in your kitchen.

The H-2A temporary agricultural worker program allows U.S. farms to hire foreign nationals for seasonal jobs when they can demonstrate a shortage of domestic workers. What began as a relatively small program has expanded into the primary labor source for the nation’s fruit and vegetable farms. In fiscal year 2023, the Department of Labor certified nearly 400,000 H-2A positions, a figure that has more than tripled over the past decade. States like Florida, Georgia, California, and Washington are the largest users, relying on this workforce for their most labor-intensive crops.

These are not jobs that just anyone can do. The work is physically punishing, requiring speed, stamina, and a specific skill set to harvest delicate produce without bruising or damage. H-2A workers form the backbone of the harvest for everything from Florida strawberries and Georgia blueberries to Washington apples and California leafy greens. Without them, much of this produce would simply rot in the fields.

This reliance has created a system that is both essential and incredibly fragile. Farmers who use the program must navigate a complex and expensive bureaucratic process, petitioning the government months in advance. They are also required to pay a specific, government-mandated minimum wage known as the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, or AEWR.

The logic is to ensure that the hiring of foreign workers does not negatively impact the wages of domestic farmworkers. In practice, the AEWR has become the single greatest pressure point for farms across the country.

For farmers, the cost of labor is not just one expense among many; it is often the single largest component of their budget, frequently accounting for 50 percent or more of total operating costs. And that cost is rising at an unsustainable pace. The AEWR is recalculated annually based on federal survey data, and in recent years, those calculations have delivered staggering increases.

In 2024, the average AEWR increased by another 5.6 percent nationwide, but the state-level figures reveal the true extent of the squeeze. In California, the rate climbed to $19.75 per hour. In Florida, it is $14.77.

These are not just hourly wages; the H-2A program also mandates that employers provide housing and daily transportation to and from the worksite, all at no cost to the worker. When combined with administrative costs, transportation from the worker’s home country, and other fees, the true cost can be much higher.

This creates a formidable economic vise. On one side, farmers are locked into these non-negotiable, government-mandated labor costs. On the other, they face immense pressure from a highly consolidated grocery industry.

A handful of massive retail chains control the majority of the market, and their buyers have enormous power to demand low prices from their suppliers. A grower in California cannot simply tell a national supermarket chain that they need to raise prices by 15 percent because their labor costs went up. The buyer can, and often will, turn to another supplier or even another country, like Mexico, where labor costs are significantly lower.

"We are price takers, not price makers," is a common refrain among American growers. This dynamic is pushing many to a breaking point. An analysis by the American Farm Bureau Federation found that some farm input costs have risen by as much as 30 percent in recent years, with labor leading the way. The result is a shrinking margin of profitability that threatens the viability of family-owned farms that have operated for generations.

Some are forced to make difficult choices. They may let a final, late-season harvest go unpicked because the cost of labor would exceed the return. Others are making a more permanent shift, moving away from specialty crops like asparagus or cherries and toward less labor-intensive commodity crops like corn or soybeans, which can be harvested mechanically. This quiet shift has profound implications for the diversity of produce available to American consumers.

The financial strain on farms is not a distant, abstract problem. It translates directly into the price and availability of the food on your table. While retailers are resistant to price hikes, they are not immune to the fundamental laws of supply and demand. As farmers’ costs escalate, a portion of that increase is inevitably passed downstream.

Consider the direct impact. According to agricultural economists, a 10 percent increase in the AEWR can translate to a 2 to 4 percent increase in the retail price of hand-harvested produce. When wage rates jump by over 5 percent year after year, the cumulative effect on a household’s grocery bill becomes significant. That extra dollar for a pound of asparagus or another fifty cents for a bag of apples is not just random inflation; it is a direct echo of the wage paid to the worker who harvested it.

The consolidation of the grocery sector further complicates this. To maintain their own profit margins, large retailers often use produce as "loss leaders," items priced artificially low to draw customers into the store. This puts even more pressure back on the farmer, who is forced to absorb the difference. The farmer, in effect, is subsidizing the grocery store’s marketing strategy.

Beyond price, the labor squeeze threatens variety. The United States has long enjoyed an incredible diversity of domestically grown produce. But if a farmer in Michigan decides it is no longer profitable to grow cherries because of labor costs, and a grower in Washington makes the same calculation about apples, the supply tightens. Supermarkets may then rely more heavily on imports to fill the gap, which come with their own set of challenges, including longer supply chains, different food safety standards, and reduced freshness.

In the most extreme cases, farms simply go out of business. When a multi-generational family farm sells its land, it is often not to another farmer. It is to a real estate developer. That acreage, which once produced food, is permanently removed from the nation’s agricultural capacity, a loss that cannot be easily undone.

Faced with an intractable labor cost problem, many are looking to technology for a solution. The holy grail of agricultural technology, or "AgTech," is a robot capable of harvesting delicate specialty crops with the same speed and discernment as a human worker. Venture capitalists and universities are pouring hundreds of millions of doll

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Who Is Picking Your Strawberries This Year?

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