ATLANTA, GA – Attorney General Chris Carr has taken new action to obtain lower costs for Georgia farmers who, under the Biden administration, were mandated to pay significant and arbitrary wage increases for H-2A labor. To address these increased costs, Carr has written a letter to Congressional leaders calling for the immediate passage of H.R. 1624, the “Supporting Farm Operations Act of 2025,” to put a stop to the continuously rising Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR) for H-2A guest farm workers. 

“We won’t let D.C. dictate how we farm here in Georgia – and that includes any attempts to impose ridiculous wage increases on our agricultural employers,” said Carr. “Farmers drive our state’s No. 1 industry and ensuring they’re able to operate efficiently and effectively will always be my top priority. I’m proud to stand with our farm families, and I’ll keep fighting until this problem is fixed, no matter how long it takes.”

“These increases are crushing Georgia farmers,” said State Representative Robert Dickey, chairman of the House Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee. “Agriculture producers have a hard enough time as it is, but when a prior administration increases foreign labor wage rates over 20 percent in the past 3 years, it is devastating.”

Under the current AEWR, Georgia farmers will pay an estimated 9.5 percent increase in wages to use H-2A labor in 2025. This is on top of the 14 percent and 7 percent increases handed down by the Biden administration in 2023 and 2024. The “Supporting Farm Operations Act of 2025” would return AEWR rates back to those of 2023 and freeze the rates from further increase through at least Dec. 31, 2026.  

This is one of several actions Carr has taken to protect Georgia farmers from rising costs and federal overreach. 

  • Just last year, Carr filed suit – and successfully blocked – a Biden administration rule that would have forced agricultural employers to allow temporary H-2A farm workers to form a union.
  • In 2024, Carr pushed back against a proposal from the Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency that would have imposed unprecedented pollution limits and pretreatment standards on an additional 3,000 meat and poultry processors.
  • In 2023, Carr led a 24-state coalition and successfully blocked the Biden administration from enforcing its revised definition of “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) – an attempt to regulate nearly every conceivable body of water in the country.
  • In December 2024, Carr wrote a letter to the U.S. Secretaries of Labor and Agriculture regarding the continuously rising AEWR for H-2A guest farm workers as part of his commitment to working with the Trump administration to grow Georgia’s No. 1 industry.
  • In November 2024, Carr joined Governor Brian Kemp and members of the Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission in approving $100 million in disaster relief for farmers and timber producers impacted by Hurricane Helene.

Find a copy of Carr's most recent letter Download this pdf file. here .