Western Farm Press caught up with him during his stop at the Arizona Farm Bureau Federation headquarters in Gilbert.

Agriculture’s top concern

“Immigration is an issue everywhere,” Duvall said when asked about his No. 1 concern facing agriculture today. “Immigration in the East is about a stable work force. In the West, it’s not only about a need for a constant labor force but also about border control.”

Duvall calls the nation’s current guest worker program “broken.”

“We need a simplified H-2A program that allows farmers and ranchers to bring reliable help here to harvest, as well as to utilize experienced undocumented workers who have been here for years and have become parts of family farms.”

He explains, “We should be able to pass laws that would give them an adjustment of status - notice I did not say ‘amnesty’ - but a status adjustment where they can stay and work. In America, we’re not supposed to suppress people and leave them in the shadows, but help them contribute to the community as taxpayers.”

What is the practical likelihood of immigration reform?

“We don’t have it,” Duvall says. “We’re admitting that we’re okay with how it is now, and hopefully whoever becomes the next leader of this country will realize this.”

If the U.S. brings immigration reform to reality and creates an easier to use H-2A program, he says the result will be more crops left in the field due to the lack of labor.

Duvall notes, “Crops can’t wait on paperwork. Some farmers are missing their window of opportunity to harvest.”