Fruit growers need to collaborate with each other to address labor shortages, suggests Kirk Mayer, manager of Washington Growers Clearing House Association. For a number of years, orchardists have seen the value of sharing crews with their neighbors, so the workers don’t leave the area when a grower has some down time. But Mayer said the next step might be to team up with growers in other regions, such as California and Oregon, to employ workers and move them north as needed from the very earliest districts to the latest, rather than just wait for workers to show up. Growers […]