WENATCHEE, Wash.—Scott McDougall isn’t a fan of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, but he thinks the Republican presidential nominee will be better for agriculture on the issue of immigration.
McDougall, 63, and his brother Stuart, 67, are co-presidents of McDougall & Sons Inc., a mid-sized Washington tree fruit company in Wenatchee that they started 40 years ago with their late father, Robert.
For labor-intensive agriculture such as tree fruits the key concern in immigration reform is increasing the supply of seasonal farmworkers for tending and picking fruits and vegetables. It’s hard, physical outdoor work that most Americans just don’t want to do, even at wages as high as $20 an hour.
Legal work status for illegal immigrants who are good workers with no criminal records and improving or replacing the H-2A-visa program so it’s easier to hire foreign seasonal guestworkers are the top two items of concern.
Employers also worry that without solving those problems first requiring them to use the E-Verify system for electronic verification of employment eligibility alone would decimate orchard and packing shed workforces.
For the past 10 years, the McDougalls have been expanding their operation with more high-return managed apple varieties. They’ve invested multi-millions of dollars in new high-tech packing facilities and orchards to produce over 5 million boxes of apples, pears and cherries annually.
“We needed more tonnage to be competitive,” Scott McDougall said.
As they expanded, labor became more of a problem. In late fall of 2011, the domestic labor supply was so scarce that McDougall hired 50 state prison inmates for two weeks to get about $1 million worth of Jazz apples picked.
The bind prompted him the next year to accelerate his usage of H-2A workers. Since then he has spent $9 million on housing for the 700 H-2A workers that help with harvest, but he feels small compared with Selah-based Zirkle Fruit Co., which according to the U.S. Department of Labor hired 2,889 H-2A guestworkers in 2015.
Other companies also use a lot of H-2A guestworkers. The total in Washington may exceed 15,000 this year.
“If we can smell the exhaust of companies like Zirkle, Washington Fruit or Stemilt Growers I think we’re still in the game,” McDougall said with wry humor.
Source: www.capitalpress.com