07/20/06 Workers Needed

Workers needed. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Rumor has it that since the hail and rain storms hit over the past several weeks that there won't be much of a fruit crop. Only part of that is true. Fruit growers are desperately seeking help according to Dan Kelly of the Washington Growers Clearing House. KELLY: Tree fruit right now, apple and pear are just&you can't find them. There's jobbers going into the Worksource and they've got hundreds of job orders and no workers. They're only getting 2 or 3 workers a day showing up. According to Kelly, the hail damage created its own worker problems. KELLY: We had the hail damage in that fruit, well now we need other thinners to come in and help thin some of that stuff out. Not the stuff that got totally lost but the other fruit that got damaged. You've got to take the damaged fruit out so they can go through and pick the good fruit out of it later. Kelly says that anybody who needs a job just needs to take a drive. KELLY: There's signs along orchards all over the place about work wanted, needed, help wanted signs that kind of thing. A lot of fruit was left hanging on trees last year that was eventually picked but was totally unpackable. KELLY: Last year what happened in some orchards, they let them hang longer than they normally would have because they didn't have the workers and they went ahead and picked and they ended&they put it into storage and everything, came out and couldn't pack it so they just wasted a ton of money on picking fruit that they couldn't end up packing. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.