Oregon Public Broadcasting

Northwest farmers are unsure if there will be enough labor to harvest the region’s fruit this summer and fall. The sinking economy, high gas prices and low cherry yields are all playing a part. Richland correspondent Anna King reports.

Farmers say it’s hard to know if they have enough pickers until they are in the middle of harvest.

Usually the early summer cherry season acts as the canary. It tells apple, peach and pear farmers whether they’ll have enough workers. But this year, much of the cherry crop got wiped out by bad pollination weather and late-season frost.

Some farmers are worried that a poor cherry season and high gas prices may encourage many California pickers to stay home instead of traveling to the Northwest.

Brenton Roy of Prosser, Washington says even if the workers do make it here, they may not want to work for remote farms.

Brenton Roy: "The further away you are from the labor pool, the more you are going to have to pay without a doubt. Sometimes even though you pay more, psychologically sometimes people still don’t want to drive that far to get to work because they know it costs them that much more than it used to."

On the other hand, Roy says the housing bust could end up channeling construction workers into agriculture.