Labor Issues

Labor Issues

Labor Issues. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Yesterday we began a conversation with Washington Farm Labor Association’s, Dan Fazio regarding the problem with farm labor.

FAZIO: I think it’s going to be a rough couple of years for agriculture because we just don’t see any leadership coming out of Washington DC for at least 2 years so that’s kind of what we’re working on, getting concrete solutions where we can put more boots on the ground of more apple pickers with picking sack on for the apple harvest.

Capital Hill has struggled and failed many times with trying to establish a stable and legal work force.

FAZIO: What was evident is there’s going to be no help from Washington DC. We’re going to have to solve this shortage ourselves. It’s kind of like what would happen if we didn’t have immigrant labor and that’s really where we are now because no one’s coming up, all the people that are working here are really reluctant to work in migrant labor anymore and so we’re really seeing what it’s going to be like in the tree fruit industry if we don’t have a guest worker program.

Fazio was at the Washington Hort’s annual meeting talking about the labor issue.

FAZIO: One of the speakers said immigrants are going to pick your fruit and they can either pick it here in Washington State or they can pick it in Chile or China. And so that’s kind of where we’re at. Do we want to have an immigrant population picking the fruit or do we want to off-shore it?

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network. 

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