Labor Shortage Fears

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Washington state has one of the largest and most productive agricultural economies in the nation,with that comes the need for seasonal workers. Washington Farm Labor Association’s Dan Fazio says that as summer kicks off a labor shortage for this year is a very real possibility.

FAZIO: As the economy improves workers are being siphoned off from seasonal ag work into construction work where the pay is the same or better and there’s a much longer season. Add to that the fact that many of the agriculture workers are retiring and then migrant workers from Mexico are no longer able to cross the border and come to Washington.

There is some good news though.

FAZIO: We do have a federal program that helps farmers when there are not enough domestic workers, and it allows farmers to legally bring workers, with visas, from Mexico. Even further good news, farmers from Washington State have embraced the federal program and so we are looking at more than 8,000 of these legal foreign workers that are coming here. The farmers are paying all their way up and back. So right now we have two programs available for the legal workers. First is, if employers contact us here at WAFLA before July 1 we can file an emergency application to get workers here by September 1 using the federal emergency procedures. If you miss that deadline, we have fifty workers who are finishing up on a contract in mid to late September and will be available sometime around September 20. And that’s a very affordable option since another grower has already paid to bring these workers up here.

For more information visit www.wafla.org.

FAZIO: Send us in inquiry and we’ll get you the information because we really don’t want to have any fruit left on the ground.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.