Wasted asparagus

Owyhee Produce invited the public to pick and take home free asparagus on Saturday at one of their fields in Oregon.

Shay Myers, a third-generation farmer, told us he didn't have enough workers to harvest his 350,000 pounds of asparagus and take it to market.

“It’s getting to a point where farmers across this valley and across this nation want to give up," said Myers. "We are tired of the bureaucratic process we have to go through and all of the requirements that we have that they don’t have in Mexico."

Owyhee Produce normally gets most of its workers from Mexico through the H2A program that legally brings migrants who want to work, but because of problems at the southern border, those workers were delayed in getting to the Idaho and Oregon border.

"The H2A program is a good program but it doesn't work like it should," said Myers. "It's just that disconnect between the government officials who are trying to do their jobs and those of us who are trying to supply food if we don't have people here for 90 days this whole crop is gone, which is why the people are in the field right now."

Instead of letting this crop go to waste Owyhee Produce allowed people to pick asparagus on Saturday and the count they had this morning was around 2,500 people.