Russ Kohler stands at the edge of one of his grazing pastures, looking toward his red milking barn silhouetted by the hills of Heber Valley. Like most farmers, all he sees is a long, never-ending list of things to do. He's also struggling to find people to help.
"It's been really difficult for us as farmers to find Americans who are willing to put in that type of work," the owner of Heber Valley Artisan Cheese said.
"They just don't want to."
Kohler is a fourth-generation farmer in the valley. For the last decade, it has been increasingly difficult for him to find enough skilled workers for his farm. Like other Utah farmers, he's relied on a migrant workforce.
But over the years, things have changed.
Utah farmers are facing a lot of uphill battles. President Donald Trump's war in Iran has driven their input costs through the roof. They're facing shrinking land, severe drought, an aging primary workforce and volatile markets. Together, this means their margins are razor-thin, making it difficult to offer competitive wages against higher-paying industries like construction, which utilizes about a fifth of Utah's immigrant labor force.
"Even if you get the type of person that you want, we're now competing against other industries just to retain them because we can't afford to pay them what some of those other industries can," he said.
In February, the American Farm Bureau Federation called the worker shortages felt across the country "the single greatest threat to agriculture."
Farms around the U.S. have also felt the squeeze from increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity, with countless stories from around the country of legal immigrants and American citizens being arrested.
Kohler said there is definitely a sense of fear.
"What happens if overnight, you know, a third of your workforce disappears," he said. "That's devastating to a business, any business, let alone farming, so, it's something that farmers definitely had to worry about, just because there was always that possibility looming over your head."
John Walt Boatright, the director of government affairs at the bureau, said anecdotally he has seen a chilling effect on the migrant labor force in the wake of ICE crackdowns because of the "fear and uncertainty" they breed in the community.
He said it can be difficult to get members of Congress who don't understand agriculture, let alone have ever seen a farm, to understand the plight of farmers right now.
There are federal mechanisms meant to help farmers get workers, such as the H-2A visa.
Like many producers, Kohler has relied on this nonimmigrant visa that allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals in for seasonal work. If you're a fruit farmer, the program can be good. You can hire a crew for a harvest season and get the job done. But for his operation, there are serious limitations.
"Bringing in a person that comes in for a handful of months, well, on a dairy I've barely got them trained up to start understanding what they're really supposed to be doing, and it's time for them to turn around and go home," he said.
Utah Rep. Celeste Maloy is co-sponsoring an agriculture workforce bill introduced in the House this summer. If passed, it would remove the seasonal limits of the H-2A visa, making it easier for farmers to retain workers for longer.
Kohler has three full-time staff on his farm, and if he hadn't mechanized some of his milking infrastructure to make up for the lack of workers — he'd need two more.
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