Georgia Farms Face 2026 Labor Crisis: Interns Key

During the 2025 harvest, Martha Chen found herself in a tough spot. She was staring out at rows of unpicked blueberries at Sunnyside Farms, her family’s third-generation operation in Georgia’s Oconee Valley, and she knew her usual seasonal labor force wouldn’t cut it. For years, she’d relied on the local high school ag program for help, but enrollment had been dropping, leaving her short on workers. She needed a fix, fast, or her crop wasn’t going to make it to market. It’s a story that’s all too familiar for anyone in the agricultural education sector and it’s a perfect example of why we need solid student internship programs.

The blueberries were Martha’s immediate problem. It’s a high-value crop, but it’s also a ton of work to pick. Her farm, right off Highway 78 near Watkinsville, usually brings on 15 to 20 temp workers for the six-week harvest. For the 2025 season, she’d only found half that. This shortage wasn’t a hit to her income, it threatened to sink her whole season. “We’ve always counted on local kids,” she told her cousin, who used to be an ag extension agent, on a tense phone call. “They get real experience, we get the help. Now it feels like kids aren’t even looking at ag as a career.”

Martha’s not alone in feeling this way. A 2024 USDA report laid it out in stark numbers: between 2020 and 2025, there would be about 59,400 job openings a year in ag and related sectors, but only 36,100 qualified grads to fill them. That’s a huge gap. It’s a clear sign that the problem goes way beyond seasonal labor, the pipeline of young talent is getting smaller, and if something doesn’t change, farms like Sunnyside are in for a rough ride.

The issue wasn’t that kids don’t care about food. It was a perception problem, they just didn’t see the opportunities or know what modern agriculture is really about. A lot of students, even in rural towns, think farming is just back-breaking labor, completely missing the tech and the wide range of careers that are part of the industry now. We’re talking about precision agriculture, using drones for crop monitoring, data analytics to get better yields, and complex supply chain management. That’s what contemporary farming is, and it’s not what most of them see at career day.

So Martha went straight to the source: the Oconee County High School’s FFA chapter. She knew the advisor, Mr. Henderson, was all about getting students real-world experience. Her pitch wasn’t just about hiring a few temporary pickers. She wanted to build a real internship program. “I definitely need the help,” she told Mr. Henderson, “but I also want to show these students what a modern farm is. We’re dealing with a lot more than dirt and tractors these days.”

Mr. Henderson immediately saw the potential. His own program was struggling with enrollment, but he had a small, dedicated group of students who were hungry for exactly this kind of thing, a real, paid opportunity that went beyond a classroom project. He introduced Martha to Sarah Jenkins, a sharp 17-year-old FFA member who was really into sustainable farming. Sarah lived just down the road from Sunnyside Farms and had been around farming her whole life, but it never clicked as a potential career before this.

They started with a pilot internship at Sunnyside. Following Mr. Henderson’s advice, Martha set it up with specific learning goals. Sarah’s work involved much more than picking blueberries, she learned about soil health, pest management, irrigation, and the basics of farm accounting. Martha made sure to explain the “why” for every task, turning simple chores into lessons. For example, while they were calibrating a pH meter for soil tests, Martha showed her how getting the nutrient levels just right directly affected how sweet the berries were, connecting the science to a real-world result.

That kind of hands-on mentorship is everything. There was a 2023 study in the Journal of Agricultural Education that backed this up, finding that students are much more likely to go into ag careers after internships that give them direct mentorship and a wide variety of tasks. You have to give them more than a job. The whole experience needs to be educational and show them how big and varied the industry really is.

Sarah’s summer was far-reaching. She went into it thinking it was just a summer job, but within a few weeks she was jumping into conversations about crop rotation and market pricing. She learned how to fly a drone to get aerial images of the fields, identifying spots that needed more water or pest control. The mix of old-school farming and new tech completely hooked her. “I never knew farming involved so much tech,” she said one afternoon while she was mapping irrigation lines on a tablet. “It’s like solving a puzzle every day.”

Word of Sarah’s successful internship got around the FFA chapter pretty quickly. When other students heard about the different things she was doing and the real impact she was having, they started asking about it too. It was then that Mr. Henderson and Martha figured out they had a model they could scale. The real solution wasn’t just finding labor for Martha. It was about giving students these kinds of experiences that completely changed how they saw agriculture.

To make the program official, Martha and Mr. Henderson started looking for funding. They found out the Georgia Department of Agriculture had grants for exactly this kind of thing: ag education for workforce development. The department’s 2025 Annual Report confirmed these grants were meant for programs that connect classroom theory with hands-on industry work. If they could land a grant, they’d be able to offer paid internships to more students and even help with things like stipends and transportation.

They also got the local Oconee County Extension Office involved. The office added training sessions on things like food safety rules and agribusiness management, bringing in specialists who could teach things Martha couldn’t cover on her own. This partnership turned a simple farm job into a full-on vocational training program.

The next year, Sunnyside Farms kicked off its first full summer internship program with eight students. Every intern got paired with an experienced farmhand or Martha herself for direct mentorship. The students rotated through different parts of the operation, doing everything from planting and harvesting to fixing equipment and selling produce at the Watkinsville farmers’ market. It worked. One intern, David, found out he loved mechanics after fixing a broken irrigation pump, while another, Emily, turned out to be a natural at marketing, designing new labels and running their social media.

Offering all these different roles is how you attract more types of students. Agriculture is a huge field that includes engineering, biology, business, logistics, and tech. When you show kids all these different sides of the business, you can pull in students with all kinds of skills and interests, not just the ones who already thought they wanted to farm.

Of course, setting up a program like this takes a lot of time and money upfront, which is a real challenge for smaller farms. Martha admits it was a ton of work. “Building the curriculum, writing the grants, working with the school… it was a lot,” she said. “But the payoff has been huge. We got the harvest in, and we’re also helping train the next generation of people who will lead this industry. You can’t put a price on that.”

What happened at Sunnyside Farms can be a model for other ag businesses. But you have to be proactive and actually reach out to your local schools and vocational programs. And you have to commit to teaching them something, not just using them for labor. It also really helps to look for those state and federal grants for workforce development. The long-term payoff goes way beyond getting one harvest in. It’s about securing the future of the whole industry.

Agricultural education is changing. The focus is shifting from just traditional farming methods to a wider view that includes agribusiness, sustainability, and all the tech that’s now part of farming. For students, an internship like this is a gateway to a real career in a field that matters. For farms, these students are a source of good help and new ideas that keep the business moving forward. Putting time into these young people is an investment that will pay dividends for years. This is how you start to close the skills gap crisis, by giving students the practical experience they need for the future, just like we see in other fields where high schools are building the next workforce.