It’s been a busy year for growers in Washington state. This season’s apple crop is the second-largest on record, says Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington Tree Fruit Association.
However, growers haven’t seen pricing that reflects the surplus, and the cost of growing fruit continues to increase, he said in the latest “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast episode.
“It’s causing a lot of anxiety and stress to see their cost of production going up steadily … in the past couple of years and then to have a great quality crop and feeling like you’re not going to be able to make the money that you need to on it so to keep the business going,” DeVaney said.
Added to this anxiety is a cap and trade for emissions in the state, from which agriculture is exempt. However, depending on where Washington growers get that fuel, the surcharge is still being passed on to them.
“The exemption was put into law for a very good reason and it has bipartisan support, and yet it’s not being realized for most producers. So many of them have been paying back an extra 45 cents or so per gallon for the last year, and they’re not able to get that money back so far, even though they should never have been having to pay that additional cost in the first place,” he said.
DeVaney said another piece of legislation affecting growers in the state is the overtime pay requirements. Labor is a major expense for growers, and this added cost impacts both growers and workers. As the season progresses, growers often choose not to pick fruit instead of paying overtime wages, DeVaney said.
“What we’re finding in [Washington and California] is that producers are having a lot of trouble producing what they need to peak periods within that 40-hour threshold, and given the low margins in agriculture, often that means things are not going to happen,” he said. “We’ve seen apples, for example, that just don’t get picked because your crew runs out of time in that pay period and you have to look at what the incremental cost increases from doing overtime to get that harvested would be — and unless it’s an extremely high-value variety with high demand at the moment, it’s not really going to justify the impact.”
DeVaney said this causes additional food waste and frustration for workers who hoped to make significant wages during the growing season.
“There’s a lot of costs that are driven by state policy, and they affect growers’ bottom lines,” he said. “Most growers want to get more for their product, but profit is the difference between expense and returns, and you might not always be able to control the returns, nor can you always control the expense, especially when they’re driven by public policy. That’s why we stay so engaged in things that our state legislature and our state agencies are doing.”
To hear the full conversation, click the podcast player above or this link. You can also listen on your favorite podcast platforms, like Google Play, Spotify, Apple and more.
