By Mary Kay Woodworth, Executive Director, Georgia Urban Ag Council
Last month, the Georgia Urban Ag Council joined FWD.us and a group of business leaders for a conversation about one of the most pressing challenges facing the state's landscape, turfgrass, and horticulture industry: work authorization visas. Georgia's green industry workforce and the legal visa system that sustains it are under serious strain, and Washington must do more.
Georgia's diverse agricultural industries are cornerstones of our state's economy. Our landscape, turfgrass, and ornamental horticulture sectors represent $11 billion in our state, made up of 8,000 companies and 70,000 employees. From maintaining Georgia's residential and commercial landscapes to operating our nurseries and turfgrass operations, these sectors are vital to keeping our state both beautiful and competitive.
The little-known fact is that Georgia depends heavily on H-2B workers – legal temporary visa holders who fill essential roles in grounds maintenance, landscape installation, and lawncare. In the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2025 alone, Georgia employers were issued 1,244 H-2B visa positions, about 3.6% of all such positions nationwide, making Georgia the seventh-highest state in the country for H-2B use. Nationally, landscaping and groundskeeping workers are by far the largest occupational category in the program, accounting for nearly half of all H-2B positions issued. This is not a story about American workers being pushed out of jobs they want – the reality is that there simply aren't enough domestic applicants willing to fill these roles. These visa workers create economic opportunities that fuel Georgia.
Meanwhile, Georgia's turfgrass, horticulture and nursery sectors also rely on agricultural workers to sustain their operations – an industry sector facing similar workforce challenges, but at a far larger scale. Georgia is now the second-largest H-2A (the agricultural visa program for farmers) state in the nation, behind only Florida. Nearly 400 Georgia employers rely on the program, with the largest labor contractors and direct-hire farms each bringing in hundreds of workers a year to plant, cultivate, and harvest the state's nursery and agricultural products.
This labor squeeze is already showing up in the industry's economic footprint. The University of Georgia's Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development found that the economic impact of Georgia's green industry grew only about $1.1 billion in real terms from 2010 to 2024, even as the industry’s employment dropped by over 25%. Meanwhile our state's population grew by nearly 1.5 million.
Such a dramatic decrease in this workforce is not a healthy trajectory for providing the services sought by a growing population. This labor scarcity, coupled with the lack of reliable access to H-2B and H-2A workers, is leaving economic growth on the table. It doesn’t have to be this way.
The reasons are structural and long term: the domestic workforce willing to do landscape, grounds care, farm, and nursery work is shrinking as young Americans move toward other industries, even as consumer demand for these services in Georgia keeps growing. Both visa programs were designed to fill that gap, but both are struggling to keep up. Even when landscape companies and horticulture businesses successfully navigate lengthy and costly certification processes, visa availability remains constrained.
Businesses that have done everything right, checked all the boxes, committed to the onerous rules and paid the exorbitant fees, are all too often still unable to secure the workers they need to sustain their operation and provide the services and goods consumers’ desire.
While H-2B and H-2A are the most visible parts of Georgia's green industry labor challenge, a recent analysis by FWD.us using U.S. Census Bureau data indicates nearly 975,000 immigrant workers are part of Georgia's labor force. Georgia's workforce needs reliable and trusted legal pathways to sustain and expand businesses that fuel our economy. These programs and the people in them all serve Georgia's economy in essential ways.
Georgia's landscape, turfgrass and horticulture professionals are not asking for a handout. They are asking for a system that works – one where the legal pathways exist, are funded, and are accessible. Washington has the tools to fix this. What it needs is the will.
The Georgia Urban Ag Council is the unifying voice of Georgia’s landscape, turfgrass, and horticulture industry (urban agriculture), empowering professionalism through leadership, advocacy and education.
Sources: U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Foreign Labor Certification, H-2A and H-2B Selected Statistics reports (FY2024, FY2025 Q1); American Farm Bureau Federation Market Intel analysis of DOL H-2A data; Center for Agribusiness and Economic Development (2012), economic impact of the Georgia green industry, 2010, University of Georgia; U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 Decennial Census and Vintage 2024 Population Estimates.
