COVID-19 Harvest Safety Pt 3
With today’s Fruit Grower Report, I’m Bob Larson. With a pandemic at hand, farmworker safety is a major challenge this harvest season, a challenge farmers and employers are taking very seriously.
Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, says PPE’s and social distancing are the most obvious challenges …
DeVANEY … “I think the biggest challenge is consistency. You can know that something is important, but continuing to take it seriously and following the rules every day, under all circumstances, is hard to do. That’s why we saw a lot of people take, you know societal-wide early on, take the rules very seriously and then they were getting tired of it and they wanted to go back out to restaurants to eat, and they wanted their gym to reopen, and they wanted to go see their relatives. You know, that’s normal, but it doesn’t mean that the disease has gone away.”
But in the end, DeVaney says the fruit isn’t going to wait to mature until COVID-19 goes away …
DeVANEY … “But, I think agricultural employers, the farm worker community, and our broader ag communities I think are doing a good job of following those rules and we’re seeing counties like Yakima that early on had been having a real serious problem significantly reduce their rate of cases, and that shows that when we are consistent we can both complete agricultural harvest activities and keep people safe.”
DeVaney says it’s a rough year for everybody, but this is just the latest “curve ball” thrown at farmers who are used to facing challenges.
