U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a>.\u00a0For dairy farmers, the price they get\u00a0paid\u00a0for their milk is\u00a0predetermined\u00a0by the Federal Milk Marketing Orders.\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cWe are price takers. We\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0have the ability to price our products\u00a0in order to\u00a0get\u00a0it\u00a0back out of the marketplace,\u201d Ziehm said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The fourth-generation dairy farm milks about 1,100 cows and grows crops on about\u00a03,000 acres.\u00a0They employ about 15 people\u00a0to help with their operation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFor our team and our family, we try to find a balance of how to keep the work schedules in check so that we can continue to have a healthy wage for all of our team members,\u00a0but also keep the farm in balance with labor being our number two cost on the dairy farm,\u201d Ziehm said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said\u00a0his\u00a0farmworkers\u00a0work about\u00a060 hours\u00a0per week on average.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Farmers are also\u00a0eligible\u00a0for the Overtime Tax Credit,\u00a0and last year, the legislature\u00a0and Gov. Kathy Hochul\u00a0made a correction to a technicality that now ensures all farms are eligible for that credit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appreciate the fact that the governor has fixed the overtime tax credit issue that some of our\u00a0family\u00a0[farms] were struggling with, and now the tax credit is available for all of New York agriculture,\u201d Ziehm said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tax credit\u00a0gives\u00a0farmers\u00a0partial\u00a0reimbursement for the overtime hours\u00a0worked by their employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Richard Stup, director\u00a0of\u00a0Cornell University\u2019s Agricultural Workforce Development Program, said the tax credit for overtime is crucial for New York farms in this transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0helping them to really, frankly, remain competitive. If they\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0have that overtime tax credit and we still had overtime in place, then it would put\u00a0New York employers at a competitive disadvantage compared to some of the neighboring states,\u00a0which\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0have overtime,\u201d Stup said. \u201cWithout it, we\u2019d be in a difficult situation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other states that have made changes to their overtime threshold for farmworkers,\u00a0such as California and Washington,\u00a0do not offer\u00a0a tax\u00a0credit, he said. This has led to those farmworkers getting\u00a0fewer\u00a0hours\u00a0each week.\u00a0However, despite the credit, Stup said some\u00a0New York\u00a0farmers will still have to make adjustments to hours and how they run their business.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll\u00a0get\u00a0somewhat less\u00a0hours in New York.\u00a0Farmers are already looking at\u00a0this\u00a0and there is some concern about the overtime tax credit and whether it will be there in the long term.\u00a0So,\u00a0farmers are already looking\u00a0at ways, both hiring\u00a0additional\u00a0workers or using technologies,\u00a0in order to\u00a0increase the efficiency of the labor that they do use\u00a0in order to\u00a0reduce\u00a0the number of hours that\u00a0farmworkers\u00a0are working each week,\u201d Stup said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The outlook depends on which industry farmers work in, he said. With milk prices predicted to be lower in 2026, some dairy farmers may opt to tighten the\u00a0number of hours their employees are working.\u00a0In the fruit and vegetable industry, farmers have had to make changes to which crops they grow.\u00a0Broccoli is one crop that farmers have started to quit growing, Stup said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c[Farmers]\u00a0have been starting to cut out certain crops\u00a0that just took too much labor because they weren\u2019t able to make any money\u00a0at it because it took so much labor, and in New York, where labor is relatively expensive, they had to move away from certain crops,\u201d Stup said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last year, some New York farmers\u00a0worried about\u00a0President Donald\u00a0Trump\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0crackdown on immigration, as many rely on immigrants for their labor. However,\u00a0New York\u00a0farms\u00a0haven\u2019t\u00a0seen a shortage of workers\u00a0in connection with immigration activity, Stup said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cGenerally, New York farmers are good employers and provide good jobs. We do pay some overtime, and often, housing is\u00a0a very\u00a0good quality in New\u00a0York. So,\u00a0we\u2019re\u00a0an attractive place for farm employees to come,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201c[Other states] are not seeing as many people available to work,\u00a0but in New York, we haven\u2019t had as much of a lack of availability yet, it\u2019s not saying we won\u2019t get to that but right now, we\u2019re holding up OK.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York farmers\u00a0are now required to\u00a0pay overtime to workers after\u00a052 hours,\u00a0down four hours from 2025, as part of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8254,8253,3478,116,288,257,3365,8255,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112],"class_list":["post-94362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-agriculture","tag-app-agriculture","tag-app-local-business","tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","tag-business","tag-central-ny","tag-economy","tag-emily-kenny","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-ny-state-of-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}