photo Courtesy of CSPAN

Ben Etcheverry, President of the New Mexico Chile Association and Western Growers member, testified before the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry during a hearing on “Perspectives From the Field: Farmer and Rancher Views on the Agricultural Economy.” Etcheverry underscored labor shortages, increasing costs and unfair trade practices putting domestic chile growers at a disadvantage and urged Congress to ensure U.S. farmers can compete on a level playing field while continuing to provide high-quality, sustainable food. His full testimony is shared below and can also be viewed here.

Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry

Perspectives From the Field: Farmer and Rancher Views on the Agricultural Economy

February 26, 2025, 10:30 a.m.

Introduction

Thank you, Chairman Boozman, Ranking Member Klobuchar, and members of the Committee.

I am Ben Etcheverry from Deming, New Mexico where I am the operations manager of one of the largest chile processing facilities in the United States, producing over 1,000 different dried and crushed chile products as well as dozens of salsas and pastes.  I also am incredibly proud to represent the “Chile Capital of the World” as President of the New Mexico Chile Association.

Our members truly do grow the best chiles in the country and some of our family-owned companies have been doing so since before New Mexico was a state or even a U.S. territory. Senator Lujan – who I want to acknowledge – has been out to many of our members’ farms and seen chiles grown and harvested, often in rotation with onions. melons or other produce crops. Our harvest festivals and chile roastings are world renowned, and I invite all of you to come to New Mexico to enjoy what we love to grow.

Immigration and Employment

Currently, there is much focus on immigration in America, and in proximity to that, our U.S. agriculture system. It’s good to be noticed, but these circumstances are less than favorable. Fresh produce in this country is predominately hand harvested – especially produce intended for direct consumer consumption. As such we have a tremendous need for the human touch and hard work that comes with planting, growing, and harvesting our products.

And when I say “hard work”, Senators, I mean it. If any of you spend even one day with the men and women working in our industry, you will be astonished at the skill and diligence it takes. As our economy has developed, new sectors of employment have opened up with many people pursuing non-farming work that is certainly less difficult. As a result, the produce sector has seen a net loss of employees over the years.  With this challenge, we have become more reliant upon the H-2A program to shore up the gap in agriculture employment as we diligently pursue automation and mechanization improvements in agriculture. As you may know Senators, unlike large acreage program crops, we do not have reliable or accessible technological options for produce, most especially fresh produce for direct consumer consumption. Consumers demand perfect peppers at the grocery store, so any machine harvesting them cannot leave peppers blemished. The New Mexico Chile Association, in partnership with New Mexico State University (NMSU) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has spent a lot of time trying to develop automation solutions for our industry. The de-stemming step for chiles remains especially elusive to successfully mechanize. This work needs to continue and expand until we solve the challenge for chiles as well as other produce crops. With the number of domestic workers declining, we need to supplement our workforce. We would prefer to develop higher paying jobs in our communities where young people stay in rural areas and are trained to program, repair, and maintain new machines. If we had automation solutions, we could also redeploy the domestic workers we do have to other tasks, and we wouldn’t have to rely on foreign workers via the H-2A program.

While this Committee does not have jurisdiction over immigration, I do want to share a few words on this topic. First, the H-2A program as we know it is broken and must be fixed. The program is expensive, loaded with numerous costs like housing, and the paperwork involved is often torturous. The program relies on three separate government agencies and accessing workers is not only expensive but time consuming. Frankly, if we had the domestic labor available, we wouldn’t use H-2A; but with domestic workers in short supply we often have no choice.

Second, I want to talk about the need for a functioning and fair immigration system, and the ability to bring the best and brightest who would make great Americans. One of the leaders in my farming community came to the United States as part of the Bracero Program in the late 1940s. He quickly became an invaluable employee on the farm and applied for citizenship with the help of the farmer that trusted him. After gaining citizenship he began his own farm in New Mexico, grew both his enterprise and his family to the point where it was passed down to a second and third generation. He was the best and the brightest. My home county, the state, and nation benefitted from him becoming an American citizen. I’m from Southern New Mexico and see the border often; there is a middle ground that can be reached, and it’s my hope this Committee can use its influence to elevate the need for ag labor reform.

Domestic Pricing and Trade

Trade and tariff policy are burning issues that are driving conversation lately, and our growers have directly experienced this issue up for years. The domestic red chile production in the southwest in particular has significantly shrunk year over year. This is largely due to Chinese-made paprika being shipped to Spain, repackaged as Spanish paprika, then shipped to the U.S. with a landed cost 10-15% below a domestic grower’s on-farm price, which still doesn’t include the costs of dehydration and packaging. We have the quality and ability to produce required yields here in America, but we do not have a fair market due to circumvention of international policies and trade procedures. As another example, Mexico enjoys the luxury of exporting produce into U.S. markets with little or no restrictions on entry, but Mexico in turn has a bureaucratic wall and protectionist attitude that discourage U.S. produce farmers entering the Mexican markets. Those in agribusiness understand that we are competitors in a global market. We just want to compete in a market where there is an even chance of success. This Committee has a role in helping the Administration understand that if we are giving fair market access to others, we expect fair market access in return.

It is also critical that imported foods are complying with the same rules that domestic production is. Americans have standards that they demand of their food, as well they should. Organic, sustainable, pesticide Free, fair wages, and any of the numerous standards that are asked for by the consumer. As a domestic specialty crop organization, we are willing to respond to such demands, yet the consumer has access to foreign-grown food that often lacks many of the safeguards and standards that we apply to our own agricultural sector.   Price often dictates consumer decisions, and we are legislating higher domestic costs yet allowing lesser standards to be acceptable for imports.  This Committee has a role to ensure imports are abiding by the same rules as domestic growers.

Federal Grants and the Government’s Role in Agriculture

I want to spend a little time talking about the “ties that bind” the consumer, the producer, and governmental policies. A short list of departments that I interact with everyday are the New Mexico Department of Agriculture (NMDA) marketing, international trade experts, crop scientists at all levels, biologists, transportation experts, food safety experts, geneticists and engineers. They and many more don’t get the recognition they deserve. All these positions and their work are made possible by federal and state investments, which are critical to helping farmers deliver the food that end up on American plates. Some might view these types of programs as government waste. However, these policies and programs have helped us stave off wars, would-be famines, economically trying times and set the standard on which the modern agricultural model in the world was created. Simply put, this interconnected system has over the last century fueled an economic boom in agriculture that will go down in history as one of the greatest leaps forward of mankind.

Senators, in the next Farm Bill you have the opportunity to build on this historic legacy and help American producers for the next century. I already discussed the need to have federal funding fuel innovation in automation, but I want to highlight three additional areas of necessary improvement, among many. First, the Specialty Crop Block Grant is incredibly valuable and has helped growers gain access to marketing materials for increased consumer education. As Senator Lujan knows, we have a wonderful New Mexico Chile Program that certifies our products so they stand out from copycat imports and earn premium prices for our growers. Second, the availability of water – especially in the desert producing regions – is becoming less consistent and reliable. This is already pitting the interests of municipal users and agricultural production against each other. As a result, it’s critically important that conservation programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) be bolstered to help growers tap federal matching money and switch to more efficient irrigation systems. Our growers are proud to be ecological stewards of critical resources like water, and with working lands programs we can do even more.  Finally, I want to share some thoughts about crop insurance. Crop insurance programs that protect our specialty crops are needed as much as they are for row crops. However, unlike row crops specialty crops have less support, higher risk, and unfortunately a weaker risk mitigation system to rely on. Right now, our industry relies on an outdated crop insurance program that USDA helped set up in the 1980s called a ‘dollar plan.’ This program needs to be modernized to account for current market conditions. Indeed, the New Mexico Chile Association worked with NMSU and USDA to attempt that some years ago, but the effort was incredibly difficult and frustrating. Why? Because the data collection requirements needed to develop a new policy were so high. USDA doesn’t really have publicly available data on our industry. As a result, we worked to collect data one by one from all the growers in the state. This was incredibly time consuming and ultimately not fruitful.  As every Senator here knows when you call a farmer and say “I’m with the government and I’m here to help” you don’t always get a warm welcome. This Committee must make crop insurance more user friendly for our industry.

Closing

The Farm Bill is an important piece of legislation that tackles some of the most complex problems in America, and they all land directly in front of us in the form of a salad on a plate or green chiles on a cheeseburger – which, if you haven’t tried it, you’re missing out. I implore this Congress to set aside partisan differences and ensure farmers have the support to continue provide enough food to eat, and enough food to make sure our next-door neighbor does not go without. Thank you again for this opportunity and I look forward to your questions.