AB 2646, authored by Assemblymember Maggy Krell, has, as of this writing, cleared the Assembly on a 58-16 vote and has now been taken up by the Senate. The bill would establish a new California minimum hourly wage of $19.75 for “approved agricultural employees” and “corresponding employees” beginning Jan. 1, 2027, with annual increases tied to the Social Security cost-of-living adjustment.
The bill never says “H-2A.” It does not have to. Everyone in agriculture understands what this is about.
AB 2646 is aimed squarely at the federal H-2A guestworker program. The bill defines “approved agricultural employees” to include out-of-state agricultural workers permitted to work in California on a temporary or seasonal basis through a state-approved job order or application. It also covers “corresponding employees”—domestic workers performing the same or substantially similar work. In practice, the bill would create a California wage mandate for H-2A workers and the domestic employees tied to those positions.
That would be no small change. It also would not occur in a vacuum.
H-2A is already one of the most highly regulated labor programs in the country. Agricultural employers using the program must provide free housing, pay inbound and outbound transportation costs and either provide three meals a day or free and convenient cooking facilities. These obligations come on top of federal wage requirements and extensive compliance rules. AB 2646 would add a separate state wage floor on top of that federal structure.
The result is easy to predict: higher costs for California farms already squeezed by labor, water, energy, insurance, regulation and unforgiving market conditions. Sacramento often talks as if these costs can simply be absorbed. They cannot. They are passed on to consumers, borne by growers operating on razor-thin or negative margins, or avoided entirely when production moves elsewhere.
That last consequence deserves more attention than it usually receives in the Capitol. California agriculture does not compete in a closed market. Buyers have options. When the state makes it more expensive to grow food here, buyers do not always pay a premium for California-grown products. Often, they source from somewhere else. AB 2646 would accelerate that trend, weakening domestic production while doing nothing to raise labor standards in the countries that replace it.
The bill also invites litigation. If AB 2646 reaches the governor’s desk and becomes law, it is likely to face a serious federal preemption challenge. The H-2A program is governed by a comprehensive federal statutory and regulatory scheme designed to determine the terms under which temporary foreign agricultural workers may be employed without adversely affecting U.S. workers. A state law that effectively recalibrates H-2A wage obligations raises substantial Supremacy Clause concerns.
The bill’s drafters may have avoided naming H-2A, but courts look to substance, not obfuscatory labels.
Western Growers and other agricultural organizations are likely to litigate that question if AB 2646 becomes law. We would be right to do so.
California policymakers say they want a stable domestic food supply, stronger rural communities and fair treatment for farmworkers. AB 2646 undermines all three. It imposes an artificial wage mandate on top of an already expensive federal guestworker program, raises costs for producers and consumers and further erodes the competitiveness of California agriculture.
At some point, the state must decide whether it wants food grown here—or merely wants to regulate the farms that remain until they no longer can.