Lack Of Workers Continues To Hurt NW Asparagus Industry

This was a difficult year for local asparagus growers not just because of the weather. The biggest challenge was a lack of labor to pick and process their fields, hurting yields and quality. Executive Director of the Washington Asparagus Commission Alan Schreiber.

"The lack of labor hurt the asparagus industry and prevented the United States from getting an adequate supply of domestic asparagus."

Schreiber believes the lack of farm workers this year resulted in the industry suffering a multi-million dollar loss. And he noted farmers looking for other options might be out of luck saying the mechanization is not economically feasible.

“We don't have an alternative to hand labor at this time. What we need is a bigger labor supply."

Schreiber says one step to helping them would be the full passage of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, sponsored by Representative Dan Newhouse. He also expressed concern that the loss of overtime exemptions in Washington could kill the asparagus industry calling it the most labor-intensive crop.

"During harvest, we're working seven days a week. Asparagus doesn't take Sundays off and so we have to work a lot of hours. If we had to pay 50% overtime, after 40 hours, it's going to be a disaster. We can't raise our prices because we have free trade agreements."

Schreiber says they plan on some big promotions to get asparagus in front of consumers in 2022.

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