Focusing
on breast
cancer AWARENESS,
awareness, EDUCATION
education and
throughout
October
FOCUSING
ON BREAST
CANCER
AND prevention
PREVENTION
THROUGHOUT
OCTOBER
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27, 2017
VOLUME 90, NUMBER 43
WWW.CAPITALPRESS.COM
GROWING
WORRIES
$2.00
A busy apple loading zone at
CRO Orchard, Rock Island,
Wash., Oct. 4. Buses transport
workers, mostly H-2A-visa for-
eign guestworkers, who pick
fruit in the 900-acre orchard.
From the lack of immigration reform and worker shortages to the Food
Safety Modernization Act, tree fruit growers worry about their future.
By DAN WHEAT
Grower
concerns
Capital Press
W
Susana Flores picks
Gala apples in an
East Wenatchee,
Wash., orchard on
Aug. 28.
ENATCHEE, Wash. — As Washington’s apple industry wraps up
another harvest, growers and packers are becoming increasing-
ly concerned about rising labor costs and many other issues that
threaten their competitiveness.
Chief among the challenges is a chronic
shortage of workers that has pushed the cost
of labor skyward. But costs could increase
even more if the state Supreme Court sides
with farmworker advocates in a lawsuit
that could eliminate piece-rate pay in agri-
culture. Another lawsuit, against a Yakima
Valley dairy, seeks to overturn the state law
exempting farm work from overtime pay.
“If piece-rate and our overtime exemption
go away and harvest costs take another 50
percent jump, where does it all lead?” asks
one company executive. The whole industry
has a commodity-driven pricing model and it
will take “huge capital investment” in mech-
anization and robotics to remain competitive,
said the executive, who requested anonymity.
“The piece-rate case is one factor in a whole constellation of potential changes
and issues and long-term trends that’s convinced growers that labor cost and supply
are one of the biggest challenges we face as tree fruit producers,” said Jon DeVaney,
• PIECE-RATE PAY
Perhaps the biggest challenge
is to piece-rate pay, a cor-
nerstone of agricultural labor
economics.
• UNIONIZATION
Growers and packers worry
unionization will increase costs
and reduce their fl exibility in
handling labor needs.
• MECHANIZATION COSTS
An unintended consequence
of unionization and more
government regulations is
they push employers to seek
greater mechanization at the
expense of jobs.
• WORRIES INTENSIFY
Washington growers have long
dominated U.S. apple pro-
duction and are increasingly
recognized worldwide for their
high-quality apples. But they’re
not the lowest-cost producers.
Turn to WORRIES, Page 12
Photos by Dan Wheat/Capital Press
A tractor pushes four bins of Granny
Smith apples toward truck loading Oct.
4 at CRO Orchard, Rock Island, Wash.
U.S. supplies of frozen berries plunge
Price impacts from lower inventories are uneven
By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI
Capital Press
Aliya Hall/Capital Press
The amount of frozen blueberries in U.S. cold storage
has dropped 20 percent since last autumn.
Supplies of frozen blueberries and black-
berries in the U.S. have plunged since last
year, but the price impacts for the two crops
have been uneven.
The amount of frozen blueberries in U.S.
cold storage has dropped 20 percent since last
autumn, from 332 million pounds to 266 mil-
lion pounds, according to USDA.
Weather problems across the U.S. reduced
yields, but blueberry quality was good enough
for about 60 percent of the crop to go into the
fresh market, said Rod Cook, president of Ag-
View Consulting, which tracks the market.
Usually, roughly half the blueberry crop
goes into cold storage while the other half is
sold fresh, he said.
Turn to BERRIES, Page 12
Willamette Valley farmers will face water challenges
By ERIC MORTENSON
Capital Press
By the turn of the century, farm-
ers in Oregon’s Willamette Valley
will be planting earlier and will be-
gin irrigating about two weeks soon-
er than they do now, according to an
Oregon State University study that
used computer modeling to project
water availability, demand and stor-
age in the Willamette River basin to
the year 2100.
Climate change most likely will
result in wetter winters, but with the
snowpack severely reduced and ear-
lier runoff. Rainy winters and springs
will be followed by hotter and dri-
er summers, but more farmers will
have fi nished irrigating by the time
water shutoffs are contemplated, the
research team concluded. Although
the reduced snowpack will cause the
loss of an estimated 600,000 acre-
feet of stored water, it won’t have a
signifi cant impact on farmers in the
Willamette River basin who rely
on rain-fed streams. Farmers in the
more arid Eastern Oregon and De-
schutes and Klamath basins, howev-
er, depend more on melting snow for
irrigation water and are more likely
to face shortages.
Willamette Valley cities will need
Capital Press fi le photo
more water to accommodate popula-
tion growth, but other factors reduce An irrigation intake pipe draws water from the
the impact of that increased demand. Willamette River in this fi le photo. A study by Ore-
gon State University examines water supply and
Turn to WATER, Page 12 demand in the basin by the year 2100.
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