Dockworker Strike Highlights Need for Farm Bill

Dockworker Strike Highlights Need for Farm Bill

Haylie Shipp
Haylie Shipp
The East and Gulf Coast dockworkers strike now suspended until mid-January is, according to Danny Munch of the American Farm Bureau Federation, yet another reason producers need a new farm bill. Munch serves as an economist.

The International Longshoremen’s Association ordered its members back to work after their three-day work stoppage while negotiations are continuing. Munch said that even before this partial deal, a port backlog like what we saw happen with this recent stoppage, is going to take time to clear…

“A two to three-day strike would take over a week to clear.”

One key reason that we saw the White House pressing both sides to suspend this strike was that is was possibly hurting an already hurricane-ravaged Southeast. According to Munch, the impact of backlogged farm exports on an already-collapsing bottom line for producers, still without a new farm bill, is another reason…

“It’s another pressure and another disruption that our farmers are going to have to deal with, without a good safety net in place. There’s already carriers that have announced surcharges on containers to start in mid-October. Now, to export ag products, they could be facing a three-thousand dollar per container surcharge, and that’s not something foreign markets are going to want to purchase.”

The 36 affected ports handle tens of (M) millions a week worth of produce, poultry, dairy, soybeans, meat, corn ethanol, and farm machinery.

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