Near Hood River, Oregon, Lesley Tamura grows pears like her father, grandfather and great-grandfather — who immigrated from Japan. Her orchards are strapped between the Columbia River and Mount Hood. There’s a thick forest of Anjou, Bartlett and Bosc, some of the trees her great-grandfather planted.
But like a lot of pear growers throughout Oregon and Washington, Tamura is going into deep debt.
“Growers have maxed out their lines of credit, taken loans against assets that have been built up and paid for over generations, and borrowed against their retirement savings.”- Annika Forester, head of the Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers
“All day every day, everything that I’m trying to do, I have that feeling that I just can not get rid of, that I may not be in this much longer,” she said.
Many pear farmers in the Northwest say they’re financially suffering, or getting out of the industry.
“Growers have maxed out their lines of credit, taken loans against assets that have been built up and paid for over generations, and borrowed against their retirement savings,” said Annika Forester, head of the Columbia Gorge Fruit Growers. “They [pear farmers] are facing cutting back their workforce, cutting worker hours, leaving crops untended or unharvested, or walking away altogether.”
About 87% of all fresh U.S. pears come from the Northwest, according to Pear Bureau Northwest. And about 442,000 tons of fresh pears are harvested annually from more than 700 growers across Washington and Oregon, Forester said.
One large-scale Washington-based farm, Gebbers, just declared bankruptcy. That family farm, according to its website, packed around 300,000 40-pound boxes of pears in an average year.
“When even the big operators can't afford to stay in business, it does not bode well for those smaller than them,” Forester said.
Oregon grower Tamura said there are many reasons the industry is struggling. Consolidation in supermarkets drives down farmers’ prices. Cost of labor, diesel, propane and fertilizer are also pressing margins.
Tamura said if more and more pear operations go under, it will have a ripple effect across the economy.
“It’s the irrigation supply store that is established here because of the orchards and our needs, it’s the mechanic who makes a lot of our revenue from fixing our equipment and keeping us up and running,” Tamura said.
Pests have also ravaged the industry.
In Oregon’s Columbia Gorge last year, a tiny pest, similar to an aphid, devastated the pear crop. The tiny bug — called the pear psylla — pulls sap out of the plant, and then excretes a sticky liquid that molds on the fruit, rendering it worthless.
The bug has developed insecticide resistance to many chemicals that have been used on it for over 50 years, said Alan Schreiber, an entomologist and head of the Agriculture Development Group in Eltopia, Washington.
Up in Washington, growers saw some of the pests too. The pests, low prices and high input costs are driving many pear farmers to quit, said Shawn Cox, general manager of Peshastin Hi-Up Growers, a fruit grower co-op in the upper Wenatchee Valley. The operation packs about 30,000 tons of pears a year, he said.
“I’ve already heard of growers tearing out their orchards,” Cox said. “They say, ‘Nope, we’re done.’ It’s definitely stressing people out.”
Oregon Governor Tina Kotek sent a recent letter to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, requesting a federal disaster designation and market relief for Columbia Gorge pear growers.
Cox said the nonexistent pear margins don’t allow farmers to absorb hard times, or disasters like the pear psylla. Growers also can’t update their orchards by planting new, fruitful varieties.
“If they [retailers] could give us a little more margin,” Cox said. “We know retailers have to make money, but we have to make money too, to support this industry to be sustainable.”
Read the audio transcript here.
