A current shared issue among onion growers is the hand labor prices and labor shortage. The difficulty of field activities in inclement weather conditions and requiring hard physical labor is a strain for producers to find labor.
One of the clearest indicators of the scarcity of farm labor is the fact that the number of H-2A positions (foreign labor) requested and approved has increased in the past 17 years, from just over 48,000 positions certified in fiscal year 2005 to around 371,000 in 2022. The H-2A Temporary Agricultural Program is a program that provides legal means to bring foreign-born workers to the United States to perform seasonal farm labor temporarily for a period up to 10 months (Economic Research Service, 2025).
In the U.S., the total average of foreign-born agricultural workers is 75%. Moreover, approximately 80% of the positions are employed in fruit and tree nut, vegetable, and greenhouse production. Most of these jobs were concentrated in California, Georgia, Florida, and Washington in 2022 (Economic Research Service, 2025).
The minimum wage for H-2A workers has increased by nearly 19% in the past 4 years in the state of Georgia and 25% in California in the same time frame. In addition, employers must pay for paperwork processing and provide transportation and housing for the employees, which raises the cost even more. Currently, the average U.S. farm wage ($16.62) makes agricultural jobs look less attractive economically when compared to the nonfarm average wage ($27.56; Economic Research Service, 2025).
Another potential issue, often invisible, arises from the variability between workers on hand-performed tasks such as transplanting. Usually, there is a high number of individuals (50–100 people) working in the fields during transplanting activity. Each person has their own method of transplanting seedlings, which can potentially affect aspects such as timing and depth.
The objectives with this work were to quantify the efficiency of field workers in transplanting Vidalia onions at an approximate population of 95,000 seedlings per acre and to verify the consistency of transplanting between them regarding seedling deposition.
Preliminary Results
Speed of Hand Transplanting
To gather answers on how hand-labored transplanting relates to onion marketable yield, the Precision Horticulture Lab at the University of Georgia, along with UGA county Extension agents, evaluated transplanting uniformity among different individuals. A trial was set to measure the time 25 different field workers would take to transplant two rows on a half bed that was 15 ft long.
The results shown in Figure 1 are from a commercial field near Glennville, GA, where 70 field workers were transplanting onions. The results showed that the transplanting time varies between individuals. On average, it would take an estimated 26 hr for one person to transplant 1 acre (43,560 sq ft). However, this is considering the general average of all field workers.
If considering only the 10 fastest field workers, the time to transplant 1 acre decreased to about 20 hr per individual. If considering the 10 slowest field workers, the time needed to transplant an acre increases to about 34 hr.
Figure 1 also shows a trend of transplanting time increasing from morning to afternoon, which means that the evaluated field workers could not keep the same transplanting pace throughout the day. The average time in the morning for each worker to transplant 15 ft was 75 s compared to 95 s in the afternoon.
Hand Transplanting Plant Population Results
Figure 2 shows the number of seedlings transplanted in each 10-ft plot. Each colored bar represents two random field workers. The lowest number came from workers 1 and 2 (122 plants), which brings the population per acre down to about 88,000 plants per acre. The target population for this field was 100,000 plants per acre (140 seedlings per 10-ft plot). The plant populations transplanted by Workers 3 and 4, 5 and 6, and 7 and 8 were nearer to the target (about 100,000).
Consistency of Hand Transplanting
In addition to the time measurement, four random 10-ft, four-row plots transplanted by eight random field workers were measured for the quality of transplanting. We measured plant population, the number of onion seedlings completely lying on the ground (Figure 3A), partially transplanted seedlings (Figure 3B), and multiple-transplanted seedlings (Figure 3C) for each field worker. Multiple transplanted seedlings represent two or more seedlings transplanted in the same furrow.
Figure 4 shows the results for the quality assessment in which each colored bar represents two random field workers. The average percentage of plants lying on the ground of all eight field workers was 7.3%. Taking into consideration the average population of 135 plants per 10-ft bed for all four measured plots, at every 10-ft plot there were, on average, about five plants left on the ground after transplanting (7%). If considering Workers 1 and 2 only, there were about nine plants lying on the ground at every 10 ft (11% of the population). On the other hand, if considering Workers 3 and 4 only, an average of about three plants were left lying on the ground (4%).
The partially transplanted seedlings average for all four plots was about 8%. If considering the highest percentage of partially transplanted seedlings, Workers 5 and 6 had the highest number (10%). Workers 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and 7 and 8 had similar numbers of partially transplanted seedlings. A low percentage of multiple-transplanted seedlings was found for all teams.
This lack of uniformity in the transplanting process could negatively impact the quality of stand uniformity, potentially leading to a decrease in yield and variability in bulb size.
Conclusion
In this preliminary study there was a notable variation in transplanting speed among workers, with faster workers being able to transplant an acre significantly quicker than slower workers. However, efficiency decreases over the course of the day, possibly because of fatigue.
The quality of transplanting varied widely among field workers, with issues such as seedlings lying on the ground, partially transplanted seedlings, and multiple seedlings in a single furrow. These inconsistencies can negatively impact plant population and uniformity.
If you need any information about this article, contact Luan Oliveira at 229-386-3377 or luan@uga.edu or Chris Tyson at 912-565-7822 or tysonc@uga.edu.
Reference
Economic Research Service. (2025). Farm labor. U.S. Department of Agriculture. https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor
