With the first signs of spring finally beginning to appear, we have been taking walks down our rural road, though these outings are not as simple as they once were. Just a couple of years ago, my wife and I would simply get up and go for a walk. The dog would follow us.
Now, with a two-year-old daughter and six-month old son, we must put the children in appropriate attire and find the proper means of transportation (wagon, stroller, jogging stroller, front pack carrier, or tricycle) based on the specifics of the situation and the whims of a two-year old. Then, once on the walk, my daughter usually changes her use of the chosen mode of transportation multiple times in ways that include, but are not limited to: pushing, riding, pulling, or being carried. The transportation of our son is adjusted accordingly. The dog still follows.
With children, walks have turned into undertakings requiring careful planning and extensive coordination around naps, meals and other scheduling challenges. Though daunting, a stroll with children is a walk in the park compared to the logistical nightmare of international shipping. What may seem like a simple task of getting something from Point A to Point B is more often a complex process of coordinating modes of transportation and a myriad of other factors.
Fortunately for the economy of Ohio, international shipping is about to get easier and, hopefully, cheaper with the help of the $842 million National Gateway. This multi-state public-private infrastructure initiative seeks to create a highly efficient freight transportation link between the Mid-Atlantic ports and the Midwest. The National Gateway initiative is enhancing three existing rail corridors that run through Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. To further the project, CSX was recently awarded $98 million in federal grant funding through the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program.
When the massive rail project is completed, it will increase capacity for product shipments in and out of the Midwest, reduce truck traffic on already crowded highways, and create thousands of jobs. Along with extensive projects to the east of Ohio, the National Gateway project calls for two new Ohio intermodal terminals — construction of one in Wood County at North Baltimore and expansion of an existing CSX site in Columbus. In essence, the National Gateway will better connect Ohio with the rest of the world – good news for manufacturing and agriculture in Ohio.
The North Baltimore site of the National Gateway is of particular interest to Jim Wellman, the president of Wellman Seeds in Delphos. Since the mid-1990s, Wellman Seeds has been expanding exports of Ohio food grade soybeans to Japan. The soybeans are harvested and delivered to the Wellman Seeds facility where they are cleaned and bagged for shipping to their Asian destinations.
“We use a freight forwarder that lines up shipping. They use a trucking company out of Chicago that claims the containers, brings them out for us to load and takes them back,” Wellman said. “The freight charges are getting to be a pretty big deal because as fuel goes up, it costs more and more to get those products landed in Japan. Well over half of our shipping cost is eaten up in our transport cost from Van Wert to Chicago. From there it goes by rail to the West Coast, usually to Seattle or north to Canada. From there it goes to the Asian ports.”
The new CSX intermodal facility in North Baltimore (scheduled to be completed in 2011) could save Wellman Seeds quite a bit of money in shipping.
“The bottom line won’t be known until the steam ship companies start quoting rates out of the North Baltimore facility,” Wellman said. “We’re hopeful that we can save $500 or $600 per container, but we don’t know yet if that will be realized or not.”
Ultimately, money saved in shipping will benefit Ohio’s soybean industry and overall economy.
“Any soybean that we can ship out of Ohio is something that will not compete with soybeans going into the meal processors in Ohio,” Wellman said. “It also helps with our balance of trade and brings foreign dollars into the U.S. For 47 years agriculture has shown a trade surplus and we hope that continues for many years to come.”
Though still not a walk in the park, the National Gateway and other infrastructure improvement projects will go a long way to improve shipping to the world via Ohio, but I fear it will do little to console a distraught two-year-old who wants to bike/walk/run/wagon-ride on a pleasant springtime stroll.

Matt Reese writes for Ohio’s Country Journal and lives in Baltimore, Ohio. For questions or comments, please contact him at mkcreese@yahoo.com. This column was brought to you by Ohio’s agricultural organizations.

When families visit local pick-your-own farms for some summer entertainment and tasty fruits and produce, harvesting crops can be fun in small doses. But, anyone who has frequented a berry patch or sweet corn farm to “pick-your-own” knows that there is a fine line between a fun way to connect with our farm heritage and really hard work. Picking berries for an hour is fun, digging carrots for 8 hours is work — hard, hot, dusty, physically demanding work.

Even the most avid pick-your-own berry patron would think twice about a seasonal job in the fields harvesting vegetables for $10 or $12 an hour. This puts the farmers who produce these crops on a wholesale scale in a tough position to find the necessary dependable labor, even with today’s high unemployment levels. 

After their 12 children grew up, Russell Garber and his wife struggled to find adequate labor for their 190-acre vegetable and ornamental crop operation in Darke County many years ago. Initially, local high school students were hired to do the seasonal and intense labor during the growing season.

“In the produce business, you have to have dependable help. When the crop is ready, it’s ready,” Garber said. “When we reached the point in time when we couldn’t find farm boys to help anymore, we started using Mexican help.” 

This group of laborers also proved to be undependable so Garber sought help from a local employment office that suggested he consider the H-2A program, which allows foreign workers to work in the United States for a specified period of time.

“This is a way to legally bring in foreign workers,” he said. “If we were going to continue to grow our operation, we had to go that way with labor. We just couldn’t get labor here.”

While an important tool for farmers like Garber, the H-2A Program is not a favorite of unions, labor groups and, depending upon the leadership, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). As a result, farmers who use the H-2A program (including Garber) have been targeted by lawsuits, extensive red tape and mind-numbing regulations. Garber actually is one of the few farmers who fought and won a frivolous lawsuit filed against him involving the H-2A program, though it cost him over $100,000 in legal bills. 

The DOL has once again targeted H-2A by reversing a Bush Administration rule that made it easier for farmers to hire temporary or seasonal foreign workers. According to a DOL press release, the new rule announced by U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis will bump up the average pay for temporary farm workers by nearly a dollar per hour. Farmers also will be required to list job openings on a new online job registry, while state workforce agencies must inspect worker housing before employers can hire foreign workers. In addition, an H-2A visa petition cannot be approved unless the DOL certifies that there are not sufficient U.S. workers qualified and available to perform the labor involved in the petition and that the employment of the foreign worker will not have an adverse effect on the wages and working conditions of similarly employed U.S. workers.

The bottom line with the H-2A changes is that it renders the program nearly unusable for farmers or anyone else seeking to hire foreign labor.

“The American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF) is extremely disappointed at the changes to the H-2A program temporary worker program announced today by the Labor Department. The new program will be the most difficult ever for agricultural employers to administer. It also comes at a critical time of economic uncertainty and undoes a number of improvements implemented by the department only a year ago,” said Bob Stallman, AFBF president. “There continues to be a labor shortage in U.S. agriculture and agricultural employers need an efficient, affordable temporary worker program to help put food on Americans’ tables. Even with the slower economy, farm labor remains physically demanding, periodic, all-weather work and it is often impossible for farmers and ranchers to find the workers they need.”

As for the almost 80-year-old Garber, who just paid off the last of his legal bills from his H-2A legal battle that started in 2001, he has little choice but to downsize his operation due to the lack of labor.

“My father worked on the farm until he was 85, and I was not planning on retiring now,” he said. “But the rules are more onerous than ever. I’ve spent 40 years building up this business and in one year they have put me out of business. I will still be growing crops for the local farmers market, but as far as wholesale crops, that’s done. The small- to medium-sized vegetable grower is becoming an endangered species in this country because you can’t find the labor.”

 

Matt Reese writes for Ohio’s Country Journal and lives in Baltimore, Ohio. For questions or comments, please contact him at mkcreese@yahoo.com.