WAPATO – Fifteen sleepy farm workers ambled through rows of Fuji and Red Delicious apple trees Friday, taking in their new environment as they slowly recovered from the two-day bus ride that brought them from Mexico to rural Washington state to pick fruit.
First: a nap. Then they planned to be in orchards, on ladders and with pruning shears in hand, bright and early today in central Washington’s agricultural Yakima Valley.
“We have an agreement, like it should be. I pay their way, and they’re here under contract to pick fruit,” said orchard owner Rob Valicoff, who hired the workers through a recruiter under a federal guest-worker program. “There’s $3,500 an acre sitting here on these trees, and to be tied up without workers is ludicrous.”
It’s a refrain farmers across the country are echoing this year, as crackdowns at the border slow the migration of Mexican workers – legal and illegal alike – to the United States.
Timing is everything to tree fruit growers, and in Washington state, concerns about a labor shortage are mounting. Washington is the nation’s top apple-producing state, growing roughly half the U.S. crop.
On the east slopes of the Cascade Range, growers scattered “Pickers Wanted” signs along Highway 97 next to the Columbia River, a prime region for tree fruit in the northern part of the state.
Russ LeSage owns 250 acres of apple and cherry trees, but also manages 800 acres for Johns Farms in Brewster. The two enterprises share labor back and forth as needed; this week, he has about 100 workers picking apples.
“I could easily use 150, and 200 wouldn’t break my heart,” LeSage said. “We’re three, four, five and six days late picking stuff, so it goes in a little lower quality than it should to the warehouse, and it doesn’t bring us the kind of money it should bring us.”
LeSage also said he’s paying more for labor than ever before. Workers were earning about $18 per bin for Golden Delicious apples, which bruise easily and are more delicate to pick. The going rate last year was about $14 per bin, up from about $10 per bin five years ago.
“It’s a laborer’s market right now. My pickers all look at me and say, ‘How much are you going to pay?’ ” he said. “They all have cell phones, and all they have to do is call up the road and see if anybody else is paying a little more.”
Farmers across the West for years have complained about a labor shortage to harvest their fruits, vegetables and other crops. Critics have always discounted those claims, saying farmers who pay higher wages have plenty of help.
“At some point, it’s like the boy who cried wolf,” said David Groves, spokesman for the Washington State Labor Council. “It’s just that, at different points in time, we’ve heard this, and we’ve seen evidence that there’s not a labor shortage. There’s just an unwillingness to pay decent wages.”
That said, though, there are unique things happening with border security and immigration that could be affecting the labor supply, Groves said.
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