Washington cherry growers struggle to find pickers

The threat of federal immigration agents raiding orchards in central Washington is causing a labor shortage that has compelled some Washington producers to leave cherries unpicked or delay their harvests until the fruit overripens and is worth less money.

At least one cherry grower in the Mattawa area has already lost about 300 bins, each weighing between 350 and 400 pounds, said Erik Zavala, a horticulturist and director of field staff for Wenatchee-based Blue Bird Inc., which is a grower-owned cooperative of hundreds of family farms.

“People watch the news,” Zavala said, referring to masked federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detaining persons off the street. “It’s definitely having an impact.

“I don’t care about that stuff. I just know that this is affecting the growers directly whether they are Democrat or Republican or whatever. These growers will lose a lot of money and are risking losing their farms because of a lack of labor.”

The official position of President Donald Trump’s administration on agriculture workers keeps changing.

An official from the Department of Homeland Security sent an email last week telling agents to “hold on all worksite enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” according to the Washington Post.

But that changed Monday when officials from ICE told agency leaders in a call that agents must continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants despite intense lobbying from industry officials.

Waves of workers

When it works, the cherry harvest, and nearly all of Washington’s fruit harvest, is a well-choreographed operation.

Washington growers have planted different fruits and varieties at different elevations and rely on thousands of migrant workers who arrive in the state after finishing the cherry harvest in California. They move north to the Tri-Cities, Yakima and eventually Wenatchee.

As the season progresses, the pickers generally can finish their cherry season in Montana’s Flathead Valley before returning to Washington to pick pears. In late summer, they start the massive effort of picking Washington’s signature apple crop.

The workers who pick those fruits are mostly migrant workers who often travel from Mexico for the annual promise of good wages.

Zavala, from the cooperative, said the year started with promise for Washington’s growers as competitor California’s crop was projected to be as much as 40% lower than past years.

“We had something really good going. We had a good crop, good quality,” he said. “And (the pickers) should have been hungry to recover the money they didn’t make down south. But it didn’t happen.”

Zavala said orchards that typically host 100 or 120 pickers were finding that only 20 or 30 workers would show up.

“We started asking orchard managers and orchard owners what they were hearing,” he said.

The few workers who did show up said many had heard through social media that ICE set up checkpoints on the Washington-Oregon border and that agents were raiding orchards.

“That discouraged a lot of pickers from taking the risk,” Zavala said. “We keep telling them that we haven’t heard anything about that. We said Washington doesn’t have raids, but nobody wanted to take that chance.”

‘Like a ghost town’

Mike Gempler is executive director of the private, nonprofit Washington Growers League based in Yakima.

It works with growers to solve labor issues, including compliance with federal immigration paperwork, housing and other issues.

“The magnitude of the consequences of someone getting deported is very high,” Gempler said. “I’ve gotten three calls last week where people were desperate for labor. They said it was like a ghost town and there was nobody looking for work.”

Candice Lyall, 36, is a fourth-generation farmer who grows cherries in the Grandview-Prosser area and farther north, near Mattawa.

“It’s been a struggle with labor for the last four to five years. But this year, it has been really bad,” Lyall said.

Her crop matured quickly and she became one of the first area producers to start picking about two weeks ago.

The number of pickers “was fine when we started. Once everyone else started picking, I lost three-fourths of our labor force,” she said.

Cherry harvest is always a race against time.

With fewer pickers, Lyall said it took longer to pick her different variety of cherries. She also had to pay higher wages to entice workers to stay.

“The longer they are on the vine, the harder it is to keep the pressure, or firmness. That affects how they are priced at the processor,” she said. “Even though we didn’t have the amount of people, we were pretty fortunate.

“There are a lot of people I know … they’ve lost acres. Some of them I know are struggling.”

Unlike apples, which can remain fresh for up to 12 months in cold storage, cherry growers face about a two-week window to pick, process and ship the fruit before it goes soft.

If pickers can’t get to all the fruit in time, the cherries start to fail what’s called the pressure test. Zavala explained that processors test the pressure, or firmness, of the cherries as they come in to warehouses.

“Every warehouse has maturity standards,” he said. “The pressure of the fruit tells us how much life the fruit has.

“Once it drops to a certain point, we recommend the grower not pick any more because they will spend money on picking it and it mostly likely is going to get rejected.

“The consumers and big stores, they also have standards. When fruit gets there and it’s under pressure or over ripe, they are not going to put that on their shelves.”

Rumors of raids

Gempler, of the growers league, said he understands why workers wouldn’t show up with rampant fear of federal enforcement.

“The rumor mill is very powerful. This is a disruption of the normal streams of migrancy and also the disruption of the typical-local domestic workforce,” he said. “There have been instances of people being detained even though they have permanent-resident alien status.

“People are worried about being caught up in the machine and sent to a detention center. I don’t blame them.”

Some reports of pending raids have completely shut down some local warehouses and processing facilities, said Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming, based in Everson, Wash.

Tindall said in a news release that the fear of the current immigration crackdown is threatening farms while not providing meaningful reform.

“The situation is now a full-blown crisis. Farmworkers and the farms that rely on them need immediate solutions – not more delays and confusion,” he said. “We need decisive action. Without it, Washington’s family farms – and the food they grow – will vanish.”

Gempler noted that Washington set a minimum wage for H2A workers at $19.82 an hour. H-2A is a federal program that allows foreign nationals into the United States to work temporary or seasonal jobs in agriculture.

“That has to be paid to domestic workers, too, if they have H2A workers,” Gempler said. “That’s near $20 an hour. That draws people in. But people living here under the radar so they can work, I guess they are hiding because it has become too risky.

“It hurts them, the growers and the whole economy.”

Lyall, the farmer, said the minimum wage set by government officials is yet another challenge for local producers.

The higher wages make it more difficult for farmers to have enough cushion to move forward.

“I’m fearful for us. If we keep having good years and we are not making a profit, I don’t see anyone continuing,” she said. “If you need a massive labor force or five guys, everybody is struggling.

“I don’t know how any agricultural industry will keep going.”

The Washington Post contributed to this story.