NW Hort Expo & Prolonged Port Congestion Worries

NW Hort Expo & Prolonged Port Congestion Worries

NW Hort Expo & Prolonged Port Congestion Worries

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Yesterday was the opening day for the 110th Washington State Horticultural Association Annual meeting and NW Hort Expo, held for the first time in Kennewick at the Tri-Cities Convention Center. Ag Network's Greg Martin, who's in attendance, had this to say.

MARTIN: I've been talking to a lot of the folks around here and they're just loving the location. Jay Brunner was the major address this morning early and had just wonderful things to talk about the last 35 years in the ag industry - talking about integrated pest management systems and how those things have changed over the last 35 years.

Also on everyones' minds as they attend this year's Hort Expo is the disruption to shipping at West Coast Ports as the labor contract negotiations between PMA and the ILWU continues to drag on. I asked Martin if he'd had a chance to talk with growers and industry leaders attending the Expo about the profound impact the disruption is having on the ag industry, if the federal government will intervene, and whether they feel an end to the negotiations will be anytime soon.

MARTIN: Lacy, some of those questions are still being asked by a lot of the folks around here and one of the things that I do get from people is that nobody really knows what the answer is going to be. I ran into new Congressman Dan Newhouse from the state of Washington and spoke with him briefly about that issue and Dan is a farmer himself; he understands the reasons that this is such an issue for farmers because they cannot move their product. Dan did say that it's a state issue for the most part so the feds don't have an awful lot to say about it but if there's anything that he can do to get in the middle of this thing to make that happen and to move on he would be more than happy to do that.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray with the Ag Information Network of the West.

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