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CapitalPress.com
March 6, 2015
Expert: Immigration reform won’t fix labor shortage
Broader economic
forces are reducing
worker supply
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Shortages of farm labor
will likely persist in the long
term regardless of possible
changes to immigration law,
according to an agricultural
economist.
U.S. immigration policy is
often cited as a key factor in
the availability of farm work-
ers, but larger economic forc-
es are reducing the agricultur-
al labor pool, said Ed Taylor,
a professor at the University
of California-Davis who is
studying the phenomenon.
“Hoping the workers come
back is a non-starter,” he said
at the recent Oregon Wine
Symposium in Portland, Ore.
The number of potential
Matuesz Perkowski/Capital Press
Dan Fazio, executive director of the Washington Farm Labor Association.
farm workers is falling due
to changes in Mexico that are
beyond the control of U.S.
lawmakers or immigration
regulators, Taylor said.
Immigration policy can’t
solve the farm labor problem
unless there are enough peo-
ple to do the work, he said.
The birthrate in Mexico
is falling fast and has now
roughly “converged” with
the U.S. average of about two
children per woman, Taylor
said.
Mexico has also invested
in schools in recent decades,
significantly boosting the
years of education received
by young people and steering
them toward other occupa-
tions, he said.
“Nothing pulls kids out of
farm work like a little bit of
schooling,” Taylor said.
Rising incomes are strong-
ly correlated with a declining
share of the workforce in-
volved in agriculture, boding
for continued labor shortages
in agriculture, he said.
The problem isn’t limited
to U.S. farms: Mexico is al-
ready importing workers from
Guatemala, Taylor said.
While immigration policy
changes could help U.S. farm-
ers compete, they wouldn’t be
enough to overcome the oth-
er factors that lead to labor
shortages, he said. “Not much
here can really change.”
Agriculture will have to
adapt by increasing mecha-
nization and managing labor
more efficiently, he said.
In the mean time, North-
west farmers can still recruit
workers by offering a better
“package” of working con-
ditions than those in other
regions, said Dan Fazio, exec-
utive director of the Washing-
ton Farm Labor Association.
Fazio likened farmers fac-
ing the labor shortage to hik-
ers encountering a bear.
“The good news is you
don’t have to run faster than
the bear,” he said. “You just
have to run faster than the
other hikers.”
With the consistent dearth
of farm labor, more farmers
will likely consider the fed-
eral H-2A guest worker pro-
gram as a viable option, Fazio
said.
More than 100 farms use
the H-2A program in Wash-
ington, compared to fewer
than 20 in Oregon, he said.
The discrepancy is due to
the longer history of insuf-
ficient labor in Washington,
which requires further trav-
el for migrant workers who
spend much of their time in
California, Fazio said.
U.S. firm buys Canadian GM apple company Apple company builds
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
SUMMERLAND, B.C.
— A Canadian company that
recently won permission from
the USDA to propagate and
sell the first genetically-modi-
fied apple in the United States
is being acquired by a U.S.
company.
Intrexon Corporation of
Germantown, Md., a synthet-
ic biology leader, is buying
Okanagan Specialty Fruits
of Summerland for $10 mil-
lion in cash, plus $31 million
in Intrexon common stock,
according to a news release
from both companies. Com-
pletion of the deal is expect-
ed in the first half of this
year.
Okanagan
Specialty
Fruits received USDA ap-
proval of its Arctic-brand
Golden Delicious and Gran-
ny Smith apples in early
February. The apples have
been engineered to silence a
gene causing browning when
sliced. Neal Carter, president
of OSF, will remain with the
company, according to the
Dan Wheat/Capital Press
Neal Carter, president of Okanagan Specialty Fruits in Summer-
land, B.C., displays genetically modified Arctic Golden Delicious
and Granny Smith apples Dec. 2, 2013, at the Washington State
Horticultural Association meeting in Wenatchee, Wash. A U.S.
company based in Maryland has announced a deal to purchase
the Canadian firm.
news release.
Carter founded OSF in
1996 and has been devel-
oping the apples for years.
He believes non-browning
and GM apples with oth-
er attributes could increase
apple consumption and re-
turns to growers. He says
biotechnology is needed
to help agriculture meet an
ever-expanding global food
demand.
SAGE Fact #111
As an employee of the State Highway Depart-
ment Sam Boardman brought the concept of
highway rest stops to Oregon. One of the first
rest stops still stands in Boardman.
While supportive of the
science, the Washington ap-
ple industry opposed dereg-
ulation of the GM apples
because it believes nega-
tive public perception could
damage apple sales.
Carter has said about
20,000 Arctic apple trees
will be planted this spring.
That’s only enough for
about 15 acres at current,
high-density planting stan-
dards. More trees will be
budded this year for release
in 2016 and 2017. Limited
commercial fruit is not like-
ly until a couple more years
after that.
An Intrexon spokeswom-
an had no comment beyond
what was in a news release.
In response to emailed ques-
tions, Carter said the ac-
quisition does not alter the
timeline of Arctic apple de-
velopment.
Combining
technical
knowledge with Intrexon is
important in delivering nov-
el traits to tree fruit, Carter
said, noting he has more in
the works.
“Intrexon brings signifi-
cant resources and a shared
commitment to enabling the
development and commer-
cialization of foods with
enhanced traits to benefit
consumers and producers,”
he said.
Intrexon uses genetic en-
gineering to improve yield,
quality, nutrition and disease
and pest resistance, accord-
ing to its website. It works
in health, food, energy, envi-
ronment and consumer sec-
tors. Intrexon is designing
a strategy to combat the soy
cyst nematode, a pest which
impacts soybean crops lead-
ing to significant harvest
losses in soybean crops.
The Arctic apple is a
cost-savings means for the
fresh sliced apple business to
provide product without fla-
vor-altering, anti-browning
additives, the news release
states. The apple solves both
cost-per-serving and quali-
ty concerns associated with
pre-cut apples, the release
states.
new facilities for future
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
YAKIMA, Wash. — When
Washington Fruit & Produce
Co. turns 100 years old next
year it likely will stand alone
as the tree fruit company with
the newest packing and cor-
porate office facilities of any
in the Northwest.
In September, the com-
pany began building a huge,
new apple packing plant on
the north edge of Yakima, off
River Road between the apple
packing plant it built in 2010
and the cherry packing plant it
built in 2014. A new corporate
office building is going up on
the same 40-acre site.
The company won’t dis-
close its total investment, but
in 2010 President Rick Plath
said the new apple plant built
that year cost $30 million.
He said this week the newest
plant will cost more than that.
When all is done, the three
plants, adjoining fruit storage
and corporate office will to-
tal 840,000 square feet, said
Tommy Hanses, operations
manager.
The company needs the
new apple plant to keep up
with its growth in orchards,
Plath said. A year ago, his
nephew, Dan Plath, orchard
manager, said the company
had been adding 500 acres
of orchard per year for eight
to nine years with no plans to
stop. He would not disclose to-
tal acreage.
The company still has no
plans to slow down orchard
expansion but maybe should
with lower apple prices this
year, Rick Plath said.
The company will pack 9
million boxes of apples this
year compared to 7 million in
2010, he said.
Mountain States Construc-
tion Co., Sunnyside, is the gen-
eral contractor for the new ap-
ple plant. The building should
be done by July and then Van
Doren Sales of Wenatchee will
install a new packing line with
the latest high-tech Compac
sizer and sorter from New Zea-
land. The goal is to have the
plant operational in December,
Hanses said.
The new apple line will be
able to run at 100 bins of ap-
ples per hour and pack 35,000
boxes per day, the same as the
2010 plant.
“That should do us a long
time, but that’s what we
thought in 2010,” Rick Plath
said.
The greatest benefit, he
said, is in improved quality of
packed fruit due to the high-
tech sorter.
Improved quality is the big
benefit, but there’s no way to
quantify it, Hanses said.
Some fruit crop damaged by November cold snap
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
PARMA, Idaho — Re-
searchers are seeing signs that
a four-day stretch of record
low temperatures in November
caused damage to the state’s
fruit crop.
Researchers at the Universi-
ty of Idaho’s Parma experiment
station have seen extensive
damage in some buds forced to
break early in the laboratory.
“There is a definite injury
to the bud structure itself,” said
Mike Kiester, a research assis-
tant with the station’s pomology
program. “You’re going to see
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some damage this year.”
“Normally, you’re going to
have a nice, beautiful green bud
structure all the way through
when you dice it,” Kiester said.
“This year, there’s just a brown
tint in there that’s off.”
Some fruit likely sustained
severe damage, though the dam-
age varies by location and fruit
type, said Parma researcher Es-
sie Fallahi, who heads the uni-
versity’s pomology program.
“What the percentage of the
damage is is really hard to say at
this point,” Fallahi said. “We are
definitely going to have a crop
but how much of a crop, we
don’t know yet.”
He said the extent of the
damage won’t be known until
May or June.
Apples look OK, but peach-
es and cherries are a different
story, Kiester said.
“We’re not worried as
much about them,” he said
of apples, “but peaches and
cherries definitely have some
problems.”
Some table and wine
grapes in the Parma station’s
fruit orchard also sustained sig-
nificant damage, said research
assistant Tom Elias, president
of the Snake River Table Grape
Association.
Chad Henggeler, field man-
ager for Henggeler Packing Co.
in Fruitland, said the company
is highly concerned about its
cherries but its apples, peaches
and plums look OK.
Henggeler is also concerned
about the impact the Novem-
ber cold had on the company’s
30,000 1-year-old apple root-
stock.
“Some varieties look better
than others but we may have to
prune them back significantly
and regrow last year’s growth,”
he said
Several daily low tem-
perature records were set in
mid-November across the Trea-
sure Valley in Southwestern
Idaho, where the majority of
the state’s fruit crop is grown.
The mercury dropped to
minus 5 at Parma and the low
hovered near zero for four days.
The problem for fruit in the
region was caused by the sud-
denness of the temperature drop,
before fruit trees had a chance to
build cold hardiness and go into
dormancy, Fallahi said.
The temperatures were “way
too cold because the trees were
not acclimated; they were not in
dormancy,” he said.
Most fruit trees require a cer-
tain number of hours between
32 and 45 degrees to go into
proper dormancy, Fallahi said,
but the region didn’t come close
to meeting those needs last No-
vember.
“We were working out in
shirt sleeves and then ... whoosh,
the temperature just went
down,” Elias said.
LEGAL
10-2/#7
10-2/#4X
PURSUANT TO ORS CHAPTER 87
Notice is hereby given that the
following vehicle will be sold,
for cash to the highest bidder,
on 3/11/2015. The sale will be
held at 10:00 am by
SAVEON TRANSPORT
4410 SWEET LANE, SALEM, OR
2009 Acura TL
VIN = 19UUA86529A018489
Amount due on lien $3,200.00
Reputed owner(s)
Shukri Diriye
Shukri Diriye
Capitol One Auto Finance
Legal-9-2-4/#4