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Friday, January 22, 2021 CapitalPress.com 5 Farm groups ask Inslee to revise COVID housing rules By DON JENKINS Capital Press Deere & Company Farm machinery sales ended in positive territory in 2020 despite the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Farm machinery sales overcome pandemic shock, unpredictability By MATEUSZ PERKOWSKI Capital Press Farm machinery sales overcame a demand shock from the coronavirus out- break to finish 2020 with adequate though unremark- able growth in large tractors and combines. Meanwhile, the pan- demic strongly stimulated consumer appetites for smaller tractors along with building and garden supplies as people spent more time at home. “There are reasons for optimism. We’re ending on a solid note for 2020,” said Curt Blades, senior vice president of ag services for the Association of Equip- ment Manufacturers. Sales increased 3.7% last year for new four-wheel- drive tractors, to nearly 3,000 units, and 3.2% for new two-wheel drive trac- tors over 100 horsepower, to more than 19,000 units, according to AEM. Sales of new combines grew 5.5%, to more than 5,000 units. Those results aren’t stel- lar, since the relatively low Nurseries to host virtual marketplace number of units can easily shift the percentages from year-to-year, said Blades. “That could have been a timing issue.” Even if sales of new machinery were basically flat, the market proved stur- dier in 2020 than initially feared in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. Farm machinery demand “fell off a cliff” after lock- downs were imposed last March, with tractor sales plunging 15-18% across size categories and combine sales dropping 12%, accord- ing to AEM. Partly due to federal coro- navirus relief and other farm assistance — which totaled $46.5 billion last year — machinery sales began to turn the corner by mid-year and then moved into posi- tive territory as 2020 drew to a close. “The government pay- ments came in stronger than expected,” Blades said. Aside from government help, farmers saw their cash flows improve from the rise in commodity crop prices that began in autumn, said Michael Langemeier, an agricultural economics pro- fessor at Purdue University who tracks machinery sales. Since last summer, the price of corn has grown from about $3.25 per bushel to more than $5 per bushel while soybean prices have increased from below $10 per bushel to as high as $14 in some areas, he said. Prices for commodity crops have strengthened due to lower-than-expected end- ing stocks as well as high- er-than-expected Chinese demand, Langemeier said. “Exports are much stronger than we thought they were going to be.” As a result, farmers sought to reduce their tax- able income by investing in new machinery in 2020, particularly since many had deferred replacing older tractors and combines during several years of low incomes, he said. “You’re looking at a situation where a lot of farms had a lot more cash flow than they thought they were going to have.” Judging from the futures market and projected cash prices, the outlook for trac- tor and combine sales looks optimistic in 2021, Lange- meier said. “If that mate- rializes, you will see some pretty strong demand for machinery.” Though sales of small tractors were slow out of the gate, their popularity flour- ished as the months of quar- antine wore on: Sales surged 21% for tractors under 40 horsepower and 14% for those between 40 and 100 horsepower, according to AEM. Those statistics are in line with growth in the retail mar- ket for building materials and gardening equipment, which saw sales increase more than 13% last year, to $400 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Demand for utility trac- tors soared among “rural lifestyle” landowners with small acreages, as well as among cattle producers who saw them as affordable and useful investments, Blades said. “The small tractor market has been on fire throughout the year,” he said. John Deere Dealers CLEAR THE CANOPY. See one of these dealers for a demonstration Belkorp Ag, LLC Modesto, CA By SIERRA DAWN MCCLAIN Capital Press PORTLAND — The Ore- gon Association of Nurseries, which represents nearly 700 wholesale growers, retail- ers, landscapers and suppli- ers statewide, announced Wednesday it will host a vir- tual marketplace event in February. The event, called Nursery Guide LIVE, will take place online Feb. 17-18. “Nursery Guide LIVE is designed to provide nursery industry professionals with sales and buying opportuni- ties just as the spring ship- ping season kicks off,” Allan Niemi, the association’s director of events, said in a statement. The virtual event, Niemi said, is intended to comple- ment rather than replace the annual in-person Farwest Show, which is still tenta- tively planned for Aug. 18-20 if the pandemic is under con- trol by then. At the Nursery Guide LIVE event, association member exhibitors will have the opportunity to showcase their plant offerings, services and supplies. Many nursery owners are already part of a printed guide published annually called the Nursery Guide book, which typically has 300 pages of listings and content about Oregon nurseries. February’s virtual event was inspired by the Nursery Guide, but will push the concept further by giving customers the oppor- tunity to interact in the virtual marketplace rather than sim- ply read listings in a catalog. The marketplace platform, according to the association, will have a simple setup and layout, allow unlimited prod- uct listings, permit multiple images and videos for each product and offer customers live video chat features. OLYMPIA — Two Wash- ington farms groups are pushing the Inslee admin- istration to write new farm- worker housing rules, taking into account that coronavi- rus vaccinations are coming. The current rules were set last spring as health offi- cials scrambled to contain COVID-19. The rules limit the use of bunk beds, cutting housing capacity. The rules were temporary, but are still in effect eight months later. With thousands of guest- workers arriving soon, merely rolling over last year’s rules will hurt agri- culture, according to the Washington Farm Bureau and labor supplier WAFLA. The two organizations are petitioning Gov. Jay Ins- lee to repeal the emergency rules and order up ones that recognize the possibil- ity of having an inoculated workforce. “We’re just trying to press the governor to give us some certainty,” Farm Bureau CEO John Stuhl- miller said. “We’re trying to stop this crazy thing of gov- erning by (emergency rule) without public input.” Farm Bureau and WAFLA submitted the peti- tion Jan. 13. The governor has seven days to respond. A governor’s spokeswoman said officials planned to dis- cuss the petition Friday. The Department of Labor and Industries set the hous- ing rules May 13. Farm- worker advocates alleged the rules were insufficient, but a judge said that L&I did the best it could to react quickly to a health crisis. Farm groups also had their complaints, though they didn’t sue. L&I indi- cated in September it would revisit the rules. So far, it’s extended the emergency rules every 120 days with only minor changes. “We are continuing to gather information from the implementation of the emer- gency rules and will use it to inform potential permanent changes,” an L&I spokes- man said in an email. “Because the permanent rules are still in the develop- ment phase, there’s no esti- mate on how long they take to complete,” he said. About 15,000 guest farm- workers that must be housed will arrive in the next two months, said WAFLA exec- utive director Dan Fazio, whose organization helps farms recruit seasonal for- eign workers. Farms are ready to test and quarantine incom- ing workers, and the state should prepare to immunize them, Fazio said. Vaccinations would align with L&I’s concerns last spring that farmworkers in group housing were vul- nerable to COVID-19, he said. “People living in con- gregate housing need to be prioritized.” The Health Depart- ment plans to vaccinate health-care workers, emer- gency responders and nurs- ing home residents first, followed by people over 70 and people over 50 in group housing, including farmworkers. There is no timeline. In the petition to Ins- lee, the Farm Bureau and WAFLA outline objections they have to the 8-month- old emergency rules. The rules allow work- ers to travel and live close together in groups of 15. Farm groups say there is no scientific basis for limiting co-horts to 15. The farm groups say that it’s not feasible to keep win- dows open in cold weather. Also, the rules require farms to let in “community-based outreach workers.” Farm groups say unscreened visi- tors risk spreading the virus to workers. 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