By Joseph Petrocco

Colorado family farms are resilient. They routinely survive droughts, floods, crushing hailstorms, pest infestations, price uncertainty and even low profit margins. Yet, there is another challenge that may hinder their survival.

Policy creation by legislators who mean well but don’t understand farming is one of the most difficult obstacles Colorado family farms and their employees face. In 2021, the Colorado General Assembly passed, and Gov. Jared Polis signed into law, SB21-087, now called the Ag Labor Rights & Responsibilities Act (ALRRA).

I would be remiss without noting the positives of the bill. This legislation had extensive provisions for farms to train their employees to avoid heat illness while working outdoors on Colorado’s hot summer days. The Colorado Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association (CFVGA) participated in ergonomics research to help determine and then to educate farmers and their employees on the best practices for long-term health. CFVGA also supports provisions in this bill that allow employees to form unions to advocate for themselves.

However, ALRRA also instituted overtime pay for those who work in Colorado farming. Though this seems positive — and believe me, at Petrocco Farms, we would love to be able to pay our employees more than they currently earn — this bill has put a strain on Colorado family farms. We are at the mercy of the buyer when we sell highly perishable produce. Rather than creating more income for employees, this law has made it more difficult for farms to remain profitable.

And, worst of all, our employee incomes have gone down. Farmers cannot afford to pay overtime. According to a survey by Dr. Alexandra Hill, professor at UC Davis, California farm employees, due to a recent change in overtime rules, earn $100 less per week than before the change was made.  In Colorado, ALRRA has forced some year-round workers to get a second job.

Some have the illusion foreign farmworkers are taking jobs from Americans. Even U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins at a press briefing earlier this summer quipped perhaps those enrolled in SNAP and/or Medicaid who now need to fulfill the 80-hour-per-week work requirement would be able to fill the void. In Colorado, these are highly seasonal positions. Bending to pick crops on hot summer days in a temporary position just isn’t a job Americans want or are able to do.

Farming is highly unpredictable. We can’t predict exactly when crops will be ready or what challenging weather — like hail, strong winds, or heavy rain —farmers will have to avoid harvesting them successfully. The last thing farmers need to be thinking about during these situations is if they will bring in enough from their crops to pay employees’ overtime.

Unlike retailers or professional services, farmers are unable to pass on the cost for overtime pay to their customers. When ALRRA passed, farms like ours explained the additional, unforeseen and unavoidable cost of overtime to our corporate buyers, but most have been unwilling to increase what they pay us for our produce. Why would retail operations pay more for Colorado produce when they can buy it from another state or another country at a lower price?

In Colorado, the minimum wage for 2025 for foreign workers — not including overtime — is $17.84. This is set by the government and varies from one state to the next. This hourly rate is comparable to what a worker makes for the same work in Mexico for an entire day — and there is no overtime pay. As a result, the United States is rapidly increasing the amount of produce it buys abroad. According to Cathy Burns, president of the International Fresh Produce Association, between 2007 and 2021, fruit imports increased from 50% to 60% and vegetable imports increased from 20% to 38%.

Another alarming fact is in 2023 the United States for the first time became a net importer of food. In June of 2025, the value of agricultural exports trailed that of imports by $4.1 billion — a gap 14% wider than a year earlier — pushing the sector’s deficit to a staggering $28.6 billion for the first six months of this year, according to data released in early August by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Unless policies change, and feeding ourselves becomes just as much of a national security issue as producing our own pharmaceuticals, metals and cars, this trend of allowing foreign nations to feed us will continue.

Eliminating burdensome regulations and enacting policies that value family farms put consumers, farmers and their employees first!

Joseph Petrocco is a fourth-generation Colorado farmer and president of Petrocco Farms and the Colorado Fruit & Vegetable Growers Association (CFVGA).