Why farmworkers can no longer afford to live where they work

Connecticut farmer Will O’Meara faces a host of challenges. Finding affordable property with fertile soil and battling a rapidly warming climate make his job feel like running against the wind.

“But one of our biggest challenges is finding and retaining employees that are able to afford to live in our area,” he told Straight Arrow.

O’Meara lives in a region blanketed with crop fields. But development is encroaching, placing his farm squarely in the urban/rural interface where growers compete with housing developers for precious acreage.

“A 12,000 square-foot ranch on our street sold for about $400,000,” O’Meara said. “It’s very difficult for farm workers to find places to live nearby, especially if they’re young and don’t have a spouse or partner.”

O’Meara wishes he could pay workers enough to afford property in his corner of Connecticut, where an acre of farmland sells for $14,400. He can’t. 

Property values in farm communities have flown sky high and are taking housing costs with them, threatening to drive families off their land and out of agriculture. 

READ MORE: How record land prices threaten the next generation of American farmers

But an unseen casualty of the rapid increase are farmworkers whose salaries haven’t kept up with housing costs.

As a result, farmers say they struggle to find the help they need, meaning longer days in the field and less work completed.

The average value of an acre of farmland hit a record $4,350 last year, a 4.3% increase from 2024, which itself saw a 5% increase compared with 2023, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Those prices create a daunting market for worker housing, said Claudia Kenny, land access and transfer senior specialist for the American Farmland Trust.

Rental properties are vanishingly rare in the rural communities where farmers reside. And, Kenny asked: “Where can a farm laborer live if there’s not on-farm housing?” 

Farmers struggling with low commodity prices and higher costs can’t afford to raise salaries, said Colburn Field, a University of Idaho graduate student who studies agricultural economics.

“Most commodities are going to be farmed at a loss, particularly if you don’t own your ground outright,” he told Straight Arrow. Farm “wages aren’t where they need to be and producers can’t afford to pay more.”

Why are farmland prices driving workers out of rural communities?

While property values across the board only slightly outpace overall inflation, the cost of land in farming states like Iowa — where an acre of farmland averages $9,790 — and coastal states like Connecticut are increasing even more rapidly as property developers gobble up land to build new housing and snatch up farmland to rent it back to farmers. 

The people who work on these farms, many of whom are unauthorized immigrants, have long faced housing obstacles.

“With no social security, or no credit record, we can’t rent a house and we can’t buy a house,” said Luis Jimenez, president of the New York State farmworker advocacy organization Alianza Agricola.

“It’s not unlawful for undocumented workers to own property in the U.S., but getting a mortgage is a whole other question,” said Harris Freeman, who teaches labor and employment law for the Western New England School of Law.

But agriculture experts and farmers say the problem has grown more acute thanks to inflation. 

“Farmers are dealing with increased costs for gasoline and diesel,” Mary Jo Dudley, former director of Cornell’s farmworker program, told Straight Arrow. “On a typical farm, labor is about half your budget, and if there are corners to be cut, that might be the first corner.”

Workers are often reluctant to talk to the press because many are undocumented, but the organizations that represent them say their lack of official documentation worsens their plight.

Landlords “ask for social security and credit records,” Jimenez said. “If we can’t provide that, we can’t rent.”

To be clear, farm payrolls held steady in recent years, with roughly 2.2 million people working on farms in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, USDA figures show. Those statistics, however, don’t provide a full picture because many farmworkers are unauthorized immigrants who are not always reflected in official statistics.

Farms that employ workers through a special visa program must provide housing, but for those who have to live on their own, salaries fall woefully short.

Farm operators paid around $20 per hour last year, USDA figures show, working out to roughly $41,000 per year. While that figure is well above the federal minimum wage and most state minimum wages, it is not even half the $110,000 annual salary needed to buy a median-priced home in the United States, according to Redfin.

How do housing shortages affect undocumented farmworkers?

Even when rental properties do exist in farm communities, the landlords are more discerning compared with their urban counterparts, Jimenez said.

“They ask for social security or credit records,” he said. “But in the city, they just want to make money, they don’t want to check your record, your background — you just provide a couple of paystubs.”

READ MORE: Fruit farmers still feeling fallout from April freeze that killed their crops

The H2A visa program, which brings agricultural workers to the United States, requires farmers to provide a place to live, but even those workers feel the impact of rural housing shortages, Jimenez told Straight Arrow.

“If workers are fired or decide to not work, they have to get out of the house quickly, and it’s too hard to find a house (or a job) on their own,” he said.

It keeps those workers entirely dependent on their employers — a recipe for exploitation, Jimenez said.

Can small family farms survive the labor shortage?

The shortage of laborers is especially severe for small family farms.

Large industrial operations can automate or lean on economies of scale to increase worker pay, but small farms that only span a few acres and grow specialty crops sold at farmers markets or local restaurants have fewer resources and less money to hire help.

States have tried to address the problem. Maine, for example, approved a law earlier this year loosening restrictions on auxiliary dwellings to pave the way for more farmworker housing.

“There’s a sacrifice farmers have to make,” said Jason Lilley, a University of Maine agriculture professor who studies sustainable agriculture. “They pay more by the time they pay for housing and transportation on top of salary, but with that comes the reliability of the labor pool.”

And, he acknowledged, not all farmers have the resources to pay for those things.

What can farmers do when they can’t find help?

Farmers who can’t find help have options, but none are ideal, Lilley said.

“Some have gone to increase mechanization,” he told Straight Arrow. “Even on organic farms there’s been quite a move toward investment in more robust mechanical cultivation.”

The switch has trade-offs, Lilley said.

“It’s an expensive investment and can be a little risky,” he said. Machines for weed control can pull out crops as easily as they can pull out weeds and can’t differentiate the two as well as a human worker, he said.

Farmers find themselves working more or turning to family for help as a consequence of the labor shortage. 

“I’ve got my days maxed out,” Kansas vegetable farmer LaToya Adams told Straight Arrow. She leans on USDA grants and farming organizations to find and pay laborers, but says she still has a difficult time finding people for temporary work.

Her two adult children work on her farm, but their availability is limited.

Her 21-year-old son “is in nursing school and doesn’t have very much time,” she said.

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