Washington State Tree Fruit Association President Jon DeVaney recently spoke with The Packer to discuss concerns on the minds of growers in the state.
First, DeVaney says, is the current drought and water availability in the state. While temperatures have remained moderate, the prognosis for some basins within the state are worse than when DeVaney last spoke with The Packer.
“Some irrigation districts have had to have short-term shutoffs to try to manage their total water use of the season, within the allocations that are allowed under the drought conditions,” he said.
The good news, though, is that fruit quality hasn’t been affected by the low water supply, DeVaney says. And that’s good for cherry growers in the middle of harvest.
“We’re well into the cherry harvest, with over 5 million boxes shipped so far out of the projected 18 to 20 million here in the Northwest,” he said. “So, to have the kind of fruit size and quality that we’ve been seeing, even under these drought conditions, is a really good indicator that folks have been managing their water really well to stay within those allocations and still be able to produce great-quality fruit.”
Though other parts of the Pacific Northwest were stung by winter damage, DeVaney says Washington cherry growers escaped relatively unharmed. While there might have been a slight reduction in the total number of cherries, the quality is exceptional.
“Sometimes when you have a lighter crop the tree can put all its energy in the sizing of the fruit that is there,” he said. “That’s what we’ve been seeing is the size of fruit has been up a little bit and skewing towards the bigger sizes, which gets growers better pricing because that’s always good news.”
A lower snowpack, through winter meant reservoirs didn’t recharge, and that makes it a challenge for the state’s tree fruit growers as well as growers of other specialty crops in the state.
“It just re-emphasizes that there needs to be better forecasting and resiliency preparation for changing weather patterns that we can’t count on, [such as] things being stable and predictable from year to year in terms of precipitation patterns,” he said.
And in the Yakima Basin, there’s a joint effort between irrigators, tribes, state and local governments to plan for improved supply and conservator efforts, DeVaney says, while other basins aren’t at that point yet.
Other updates
DeVaney says while the rule on H-2A wages and the trade program has been finalized, it’s facing legal challenges.
“Some of the provisions are not going to be fully implemented yet. Some of the initial dates were here at the end of June,” he said. “Now some of those dates have been pushed out pending a court review till August. In some cases, the industry is looking for more guidance from the Department of Labor on what they think their rule means.”
DeVaney says those in the industry have some concern about the adverse wage rate freeze to the 2023 level for two calendar years. He says there’s language that would fund the implementation of some of the worker protection rules in April.
“Our industry has been talking to members of Congress about the need for some delay in further wage increases and rolling back are delaying the implementation of some of the provisions of the most recent H-2A wage rulemaking side of DOL,” he said.
DeVaney says this is of concern because the rule does not break out different tasks and duties.
“If you have one worker drive a vehicle that is shuttling people to work, they might be now a chauffeur and everyone on their contract has to be paid at the chauffeur rate for all hours that they’re working for the entire time,” he said.
Another provision would set a funding restriction to 34 hours; this, DeVaney says, would affect farms that share contracts. The Department of Labor would have an hour threshold to be considered part-time, and workers could not share part-time responsibilities on multiple farms.
“There’s a lot of folks who struggle with understanding agricultural work as being weather dependent, and that you have bursts of activity and then nothing,” he said. “There tends to be that view that work should be spread out and scheduled as it is for many people who work in offices and you just leave that in your inbox and come back to it tomorrow. If you have part-time work, you just do 20 hours a week for as many weeks as the job will continue when that’s really not how agricultural work tends to shake out.”
The association and other industries have been communicating with the Department of Labor and the Department of Homeland Security through the rulemaking process. DeVaney says the association is hoping for some guidance and clarity around some of the changes to the management of the H-2A program, where the changes significantly affect the state’s tree fruit growers.
“Those impacts have been felt by a lot of growers who now are not able to manage and afford the workforce that they need, especially in competition with producers in other countries who have very different labor cost structures and access to labor,” he said. “Even some of our friends north of the border in Canada have a much easier-to-navigate temporary worker program with a much lower cost.“
He says the association hopes for some targeted relief to growers as the rules are being finalized.
Despite the drought, DeVaney says the general outlook for the 2024-25 apple season looks to be of good quality.
“The coffee shop talk in and among growers has been that this coming crop looks to be average,” he said. “As they look around at the developing fruit on the trees, they say it looks like more average crop size, which after having the 2022 crop be unusually small and the 2023 crop being unusually large, average sounds good.”
DeVaney says growers in the state are facing rising costs of production and that input costs have risen rapidly.
“While consumers have been so pressured by the sort of sticker shock of grocery prices, many of them have been scrutinizing their purchases, and we’ve not seen the actual returns to growers grow at the same rate that their production costs have grown,” he said. “We were already on a very narrow-margin industry facing difficult, cyclical problems.”
He says he expects the same trade policy for the next four years, regardless of the administration.
“We’re not likely to see a more aggressive pursuit of access to foreign markets that would benefit a lot of our producers,” he said. “And that has caused strain on a lot of our fruit growers who are still facing some retaliatory tariffs and market access barriers.”
A bright spot is the reopening of India to U.S. trade, including tree fruit from Washington.
“We’ve seen some important growth and renewed exports to India, with over 2 million boxes shipped of this year’s crop so far,” DeVaney said. “That’s a significant benefit in a time when ... the prior year was a very small amount. And when we have a big, big apple crop this year, a market for a couple of million boxes is very welcome.”
