The shortage of skilled, reliable labor on today’s farms and ranches continues to plague operations nationwide and represents the single greatest obstacle to the next generation continuing that family business.
It’s complicated, expensive, and overwhelming, but H-2A can be a solution. Sadly, it can also be fraught with litigation and fines if not done correctly. So, it’s vital to know and trust your service provider, and feel comfortable that they have your farm — and your workers’ — best interests at heart.
Like with everything else on the farm today, there is no “easy button” with H-2A. There are many steps, regulations, requirements, and rules that employers need to understand.
Great Lakes Ag Labor Services (GLALS) is the trusted, experienced partner helping your farm navigate H-2A through application filing, worker recruitment, scheduling, orientation, and onboarding. An affiliate of Michigan Farm Bureau, we were launched by our own grassroots farmer membership and have 11 years of experience. In 2025, we successfully supplied more than 2,800 workers for farms in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, and Texas. We exist to help your farm succeed with H-2A and are proud to partner with the Indiana Farm Bureau to offer this service in Indiana.
H-2A is designed to supplement the labor on your farm with contracts of up to 10 months. It can provide legal, non-immigrant guestworkers for a variety of on-farm jobs; there is no minimum or maximum on the number of workers you can petition for. Workers must be paid at least the local, state, or federal minimum wage — or the program’s Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) — whichever is highest. In 2025, the H-2A wage in Indiana was $19.57 per hour. The employer must also pay to transport workers to and from their home country, cover subsistence costs during travel, and provide free housing and transportation for the duration of the contract.
There has been a flurry of regulatory changes and updates that affect the H-2A program over the past few months. There are still many unanswered questions, and much further detail and guidance are needed from federal agencies to understand the impact. A very significant change is a new source and rate for the AEWR.
The 2023 AEWR rule was vacated by a Louisiana court, and on October 2, 2025, the Department of Labor (DOL) published a new Interim Final Rule on the AEWR Methodology (IFR). Going forward, the data source for the AEWR will change from the discontinued USDA Farm Labor Survey to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey. It will establish new AEWRs for the five most common Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes for field and livestock worker occupations previously measured by the FLS and divide them into two skill-based categories.
The rule also includes a new “Adverse Compensation Adjustment” (ACA) that recognizes the value of additional employer-provided benefits, such as housing, and applies a -$1.27/hour adjustment to the AEWR for foreign H-2A workers. The comment period for the rule closed on December 1st, and the final rule has not yet been published. In the IFR, Indiana’s AEWR in 2026 will be $13.66/hour ($14.93 – $1.27) for Skill Level 1 and $17.95 hour ($19.22 – $1.27) for Skill Level 2 when the ACA adjustment of -$1.27hour is factored in.
Also included in other recent regulatory changes is a DOL decision reversing a 13-year-old agency “guidance,” allowing farms to stagger workers on a single contract up to the 50% recruitment date, which will help reduce costs associated with filing multiple contracts. The Department of State is also continuing the consulate interview waiver process for most returning H-2A workers, which was put in place during COVID, streamlining processing and reducing costs for returning workers.
H-2A use has grown dramatically over the past decade, from about 80,000 workers nationwide in 2010 to nearly 400,000 today. Indiana had 5,345 H-2A workers in 2025, and that number will undoubtedly continue to grow.
If you’ve read this far, you might think this is too much for your farm — but that’s exactly why Farm Bureau created GLALS – to help ensure you have the right information to make good decisions, to ensure it’s done right, and ultimately to help solve some of your labor challenges. We are here to serve the farmer and be your trusted partner throughout the process.
If you are considering H-2A in the future, it’s important to plan ahead! Reach out to us via email or by calling 517-679-4779 at least 120 days before you’d like the workers to arrive.
The future of our family farms and the food security of our nation is at risk. Farm Bureau and GLALS can help you make the most of H-2A and help preserve and sustain our family farms into the future.
Sarah Black, Director
Great Lakes Ag Labor Services