Shipping Prices and Delays

For California AG today, I'm Mike Stephens. Worldwide cargo shipping prices are increasing, along with increased wait times on the shipping docks. Tracey Chow with the Western Growers Association recently reported on the price increases and delays.

So this came on to our radar as an association. I say maybe this past fall, around October twenty twenty, we started to receive some calls from members who are looking for our produce sector, you know, vegetable. We have obviously Western growers representing vegetables and fruit and tree nuts. And we started to get calls from members who were saying, hey, I'm being told that there are certain charges that are going to go on my shipments now, like almost immediately or, hey, I they're telling me that they can't put me on a ship or I'm not getting any ships to take my bookings for the next few months. And so there just became sort of a pattern of exporting members having issues, getting their exports out the door. And it turned out that this was becoming a widespread problem for not just our association, our members, but for other produce or specialty crop or associations, as well as even our fellow AG. The sectors in dairy and beef and grain and cotton. And really every sector of ag has probably been hit to some degree because the issues going on at the ports.