The $15 million tucked in the Farm Bill for asparagus growers in Washington, California and Michigan appears to have made it through the scrutiny of a Senate-House conference committee.
"Between foreign competition, labor shortages and poor weather, our asparagus growers are truly struggling," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who's advocating for asparagus growers. "That's why I've fought to include a market loss program in this bill that will assist them through these very difficult times and help keep our asparagus industry viable."
Nationwide, the proposed asparagus payment in the Farm Bill has been labeled as pork. But Alan Schreiber, executive director of the Washington Asparagus Commission, said it's vital for the industry to regenerate.
For more than a decade, he has watched the state's asparagus industry whither away, an unintended consequence of the Andean Trade Preference Act. The act allows the country to export its fresh asparagus into the U.S. tax-free.
The act was passed in 1991 to combat drug production and trafficking in Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, and Ecuador, offering trade benefits to help the South American countries develop legitimate industries.
The tariff-free status helped Peru build the world's largest asparagus industry. Meanwhile, fewer and fewer spears have been sprouting out of Mid-Columbia soil, and major asparagus packing plants in Toppenish and Dayton have been shuttered.
In 2006, Washington produced 38 million pounds of asparagus. That dropped 21 percent to 30 million pounds last year.
In 1990, the state's asparagus crop was worth nearly $200 million. Last year the value had dropped to $75 million.
"In some respects $15 million sounds like a lot of money," said Kevin Boushey, who has been farming asparagus in Toppenish since 1980. "It's more like a parting gift."
As Peru's asparagus industry grew, U.S. growers and packers suffered. In Dayton, the Seneca plant that employed up to 1,000 workers during its busy season, closed and its expensive mechanical asparagus packing equipment was shipped to Peru.
When the trade act came up for renewal in early 2007, Boushey and other growers fought to have language included that would prevent Peru from exporting asparagus to the U.S. during the fresh market seasons in Washington, California and Michigan. But the effort failed.
"By the time our country began talking to Peru about the actual free-trade agreement, asparagus had become one of its top agricultural exports and one of their top concerns," said John Bakker, president of the National Asparagus Council and executive director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board. "Asparagus was low on the U.S. priority list."
In 1991, Peru exported only about 4 million pounds of fresh asparagus to the U.S. In 2006, more than 87 million pounds were shipped from Peru to the states.
Both Bakker and Boushey admitted the $15 million, if split equally among the U.S. growers, wouldn't be enough to roll back the clock. But it will allow growers to replace old fields and pursue mechanical harvesting technology.
"Washington still has a good window in the industry -- from April to June, but it will require automation for the long-term future. Asparagus is part of our economy cycle in Central Washington, where part of the dynamic is the diversity of the crops, which create an economic ebb and flow, evening things out," Boushey said. "It provides jobs for agriculture workers from April to June, when there isn't a lot of work."
That creates a longer season for ag workers, who come to pick asparagus, then move into the cherry fields, or to top onions, and stay through the apple harvest.
This year, the season is off to a slow start, chilled by a late spring cold spell.
"Thirty percent of my production generally comes in April -- this year it may have been 10 percent," Boushey said. "One upside is that prices are good, because there isn't as much coming on the market. So for what small amount we have, we are getting good prices."
Both the House and the Senate must pass the bill coming out of the committee, and it must be signed by the president.
"We are looking at this as a shot in the arm for an industry that has been battered, to help make us more competitive," Bakker said.
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