—by Ross Courtney and Shannon Dininny
Discussions about how the election and recent federal court cases might affect agricultural employment highlighted the labor session at Day 3 of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association Annual Meeting in Yakima.
Kristi Boswell, an attorney with Alston & Bird who represents the Northwest Horticultural Council in Washington, D.C., told growers they should expect changes in immigration enforcement when President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Trump has promised mass deportations of illegal immigrants. Agriculture will not be immune, but the incoming president will be limited on resources and authority, so he will have to prioritize.
“I do not think the agricultural community is the top priority,” Boswell said.
Instead, his speeches and announcements likely will send a psychological chill through worker communities and housing units, she said.
Meanwhile, three actions by federal judges have at least temporarily and partially stalled implementation of the Farmworker Protection Rule, the latest regulatory change from the U.S. Department of Labor. All three moves, two injunctions and one stay, put the brakes on the regulation, which would have made it easier for temporary agricultural workers to form unions and bargain collectively, among other measures.
The judges’ decisions aren’t final because the cases continue, and they apply to different people in different states — and in some places only to certain provisions of the rule.
“A hodgepodge of chaos,” Boswell called it, while the Labor Department sorts out what to do next.
Other speakers touched on underutilized programs that help agricultural employers pay workers as they return to work from on-the-job injuries and warning signs of human trafficking.
In the pest and disease session, researchers gave updates on monitoring and management of codling moth, fire blight, powdery mildew and X disease.
Rob Curtiss, Washington State University postdoctoral research associate, shared preliminary results from a study of codling moth trapping and monitoring. The study, launched in 2022, was funded by the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission amid the resurgence of codling moth in recent years. Growers hope the study will ultimately yield clear recommendations regarding traps per acre, pest-density estimations and efficient combinations of disruption and lures.
The study evaluated two types of mating disruption — passive disruption, such as twist ties, and active disruption, such as aerosol emitters or puffers — and no mating disruption, along with five different lures in the traps. The result was 15 different treatments of mating disruption type and lure type.
In terms of recapture rate, Curtiss said the research generally showed lower recapture in the passive disruption orchard than the active disruption orchard.
“To me, that means those moths were more disrupted. It was harder for them to find the traps in the orchards with hand-applied dispensers than aerosol emitters, because I think the pheromone is more evenly covered in that orchard. Disruption is better,” he said.
Orchards with no mating disruption had recapture rates similar to orchards with aerosol emitters.
In addition, he said, almost across the board, the research showed roughly two traps were needed per 10 acres, which is significant for a grower with 100 or 1,000 acres.
Curtiss also reminded growers that monitoring for codling moth is more than just traps.
“You have to understand their phenology and understand how phenology is influencing your capture in your traps,” he said. “You still need to do visual inspections in your orchard and understand where there might be hot spots or weaknesses in your control program.”
And don’t forget to use the models to assist, he said.
Three years ago, Frank Zhao, WSU tree fruit endowed chair, began examining how much Erwinia amylovora — the bacteria that causes fire blight — has developed resistance to the industry’s antibiotic treatments. The good news, from the research so far: They didn’t find any resistance in streptomycin or oxytetracycline in 2022, 2023 or 2024. The bad news: They did find resistance in kasugamycin. “Especially this year, at very high levels,” he said.
Zhao said the bacteria move very quickly through shoots, within 10 to 15 days of infection, so growers need to promptly cut infected shoots.
Applying Apogee (prohexadione calcium) and Actigard (acibenzolar-S-methyl) can slow down the spread. “This application cannot prevent infections,” he said, “but you can slow it down, so you have more time to cut the shoots.”
For more about the goals of Zhao’s research, see “Getting to the bottom of bacteria” in the Feb. 15, 2022, issue of Good Fruit Grower.
Welcome Sauer, a retired tree fruit industry analyst now working with WSU on an economic model for X disease mitigation, discussed the disease’s financial toll.
“This is a long-term disease with long-term implications, and we need some good financial modeling to help us to prioritize the research, as well as to understand the implications to the business side of growers,” he said. “This is a very interesting, unique and, frankly, very scary problem.”
The model Sauer has built includes 79 variables, which yielded the “scariest financial numbers that I have ever run in my life,” he said.
For more on Sauer’s research, see “It pays to prevent further X disease infections” from the Feb. 15, 2024, issue of Good Fruit Grower.
The annual meeting will wrap up after one afternoon session on Washington State University’s WA 64 apple, which will sell under the tradename Sunflare. •
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