“I had never worked with mushrooms before,” Luis mentioned, reflecting on his time in Chester County’s mushroom business. “But my family has always worked in agriculture, so I like it. I’m used to hard work.”
Luis, whose identify is a pseudonym to give protection to his id, is a part of the newest wave of immigrant employees who’ve, for many years, come to Chester County to paintings in Pennsylvania’s US$1.1 billion mushroom business. He’s a Venezuelan migrant who was once granted Transient Safe Standing, or TPS, beneath the 2023 designation. TPS lets in international nationals already within the U.S. to stay for 6, 12 or 18 months – without reference to how they entered – if their domestic nation is deemed too unhealthy for them to go back.
In February 2025, President Donald Trump terminated TPS for Venezuelans who won coverage beneath the 2023 enlargement. Consistent with the Division of Place of origin Safety, this designation had allowed roughly 348,000 Venezuelans to stay within the U.S. legally, with many eligible for paintings authorization. In the meantime, Venezuelans who have been granted TPS beneath the sooner 2021 designation can retain their standing till Sept. 10, 2025. This gives brief reduction however leaves their long-term standing unsure.
We’re rural sociologists – a Penn State professor and a Ph.D. candidate – who learn about exertions, migration and agriculture within the U.S. Our analysis examines how industries similar to mushroom farming handle a solid body of workers. Considered one of us just lately revealed an editorial within the peer-reviewed magazine Rural Sociology that highlights how Pennsylvania’s mushroom business was once already suffering with a exertions scarcity.
The termination of TPS for lots of Venezuelans, along side President Donald Trump’s broader immigration insurance policies – together with stricter border enforcement, larger deportations and tighter restrictions on paintings allows and asylum protections – will most likely shrink the pool of to be had employees in Pennsylvania’s mushroom business and different agricultural and meals industries.
Kennett Sq., Pa., expenses itself because the ‘mushroom capital of the world.’
Nolabob/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA
Converting face of the mushroom body of workers
The mushroom business in Pennsylvania has been formed and sustained by way of primary waves of U.S. immigration because the past due nineteenth century.
William Swayne, a Quaker florist, is credited with starting mushroom cultivation in Kennett Sq., a small borough in Chester County, within the Eighteen Eighties.
On the other hand, it was once Italian immigrants, who started arriving within the early twentieth century, who remodeled Kennett Sq. into the “mushroom capital of the world.”
These days, Pennsylvania produces 69% of all mushrooms offered within the U.S.
Consistent with the U.S. Division of Agriculture, Chester County by myself produced 199 million kilos of mushrooms – most commonly white button mushrooms – within the 2023-24 season. Whilst Chester County stays the hub of manufacturing, mushroom farms additionally prolong into adjoining Berks County and portions of northeastern Maryland.
But, body of workers instability stays a urgent factor, because the business has struggled for many years to recruit and retain employees.
Mushroom selecting is bodily tough. Staff in humid, enclosed rising rooms sparsely harvest refined mushrooms by way of hand to stop bruising. Pay is structured round a piece-rate device, the place income rely on pace and productiveness. Whilst this type lets in some employees to earn extra, it additionally creates instability, as take-home pay fluctuates according to harvest stipulations and marketplace call for. Those components make it tough to handle a solid body of workers.
Consequently, mushroom manufacturing in Pennsylvania is very depending on immigrant exertions. Whilst there aren’t any nationwide statistics monitoring the nationalities of employees within the business, our empirical research and ongoing box analysis point out that the majority of nowadays’s employees are from Mexico and Guatemala. Lately, extra have arrived from Venezuela and somewhere else.
Many of those more recent arrivals have entered the U.S. via methods similar to TPS and the Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, or CHNV. CHNV lets in positive other folks from the ones 4 nations who’ve a sponsor within the U.S. and who cross a background test to reside and paintings within the U.S. for 2 years. It was once established to grant brief paintings authorization to folks fleeing crises of their domestic nations.
TPS and CHNV had been instrumental in addressing exertions shortages in crucial U.S. industries similar to agriculture.
On the identical time, the long-standing Mexican mushroom body of workers is present process a generational shift and getting old out of box exertions. Their U.S.-born kids now and again paintings harvesting jobs of their teenagers however are not going to stick in agriculture long run.
Mushroom employees in humid, enclosed rising rooms will have to sparsely harvest refined mushrooms by way of hand to stop bruising.
John Greim/LightRocket by means of Getty Pictures
Upward push of mushroom exertions contractors
To fill employment gaps, many mushroom farms now flip to exertions contractors to recruit, arrange and make use of employees.
Contractors normally maintain payroll, employees’ reimbursement and get right of entry to to hospital treatment if any individual is injured.
At the floor, the program gives advantages for growers. It permits them to modify their body of workers relying on call for whilst decreasing administrative burden and legal responsibility.
However for employees, the program is usually a double-edged sword.
Proof from different agricultural industries presentations that employees employed via contractors could have much less activity safety, fewer or no advantages, and no more direct touch with farm house owners – which makes it tougher to barter wages or document place of work considerations.
Some Kennett Sq. farmworkers now we have interviewed see contractors as a supply of suppleness.
“I had to miss work for some weeks because my kid was sick, and I lost my spot,” one employee shared. “But then I reached out to a contractor and was able to get another job at a different farm within a day.”
On the other hand, that very same employee went on to mention that this new farm “has wider harvesting beds, and I am getting more tired and have more pain because of it.”
In different phrases, whilst exertions contractors supply continuity in employment, employees could have much less regulate over the place they’re positioned or the stipulations they paintings beneath.
For growers, contractors function an efficient stopgap to stay mushroom farms in operation, however they don’t resolve their ongoing downside of attracting long-term workers.
Pennsylvania produces over 60% of all mushrooms offered within the U.S.
John Greim/LightRocket by means of Getty Pictures
Fewer employees, costlier mushrooms
With fewer employees, mushroom farms would possibly combat to fulfill the call for from grocery retail outlets, eating places and meals processors.
A discounted provide may just imply consumers pay extra for mushrooms at grocery retail outlets and eating places. If shops will have to supply mushrooms from different states or in a foreign country, costs may just upward push additional because of transportation bills, price lists and provide chain disruptions.
With out insurance policies that acknowledge the business’s year-round exertions wishes, Pennsylvania mushroom growers shall be left scrambling for choice body of workers answers.
Lawmakers have tried to deal with this factor during the Farm Group of workers Modernization Act of 2021, which handed the Area however stalled within the Senate. If enacted, the invoice would create a Qualified Agricultural Employee standing, which would provide felony coverage to skilled farmworkers, and amplify H-2A visa eligibility to agricultural employees in year-round jobs similar to mushroom farming. The invoice additionally features a obligatory phase-in of E-Examine for agricultural employers, a federal device used to substantiate employees’ felony authorization to paintings within the U.S.
For now, mushroom farms – and the wider agricultural sector – will have to get ready for the ripple results of extra inflexible immigration restrictions. With out intervention from policymakers, the stress on employees, growers and customers is prone to accentuate.
