COVID Challenges for Agriculture Pt 2

COVID Challenges for Agriculture Pt 2

Bob Larson
Bob Larson
I’m Bob Larson. As harvest gets rolling, growers across the state have a lot more to worry about than just bringing in a quality crop. With coronavirus safety rules in place, growers not only have to find enough workers for harvest, they also have to keep them as safe and healthy as possible.

And that, according to the Washington Policy Center’s Pam Lewison, is what every grower wants …

LEWISON … “We all want to make absolutely certain our employees are as safe as we can possibly make them. You know, whether they’re here on an H-2A contract, whether they’re a locally sourced worker, wherever that employee is reporting from, we want to make absolutely certain that they are as safe as we can make them.”

But keeping those workers healthy, Lewison says isn’t simple …

LEWISON … “I think one of the biggest challenge for growers, or challenges in that safety realm for growers, especially early on in this COVID-response period, has been access to everything.”

And as most people know, Lewison says those supplies haven’t been easy to come by …

LEWISON … “As hard as it was for a regular person to find sanitization supplies and to find fabric for masks, to find paper towels, to find toilet paper, to find those things, it was just as hard for farmers. They didn’t have some sort of inside track to find that sort of stuff.”

Tune in tomorrow for more on the COVID challenges facing agriculture.

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