Agriculture and Farming

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    Organic Milk Farmers in Northeast Under Pressure as Processors Look West

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    SEARSMONT, Maine — Glendon Mehuren II’s Faithful Venture Farm, 35 miles east of the state capital of Augusta, looks as tranquil as the farms pictured on cartons of organic milk. Cows ramble among weathered barns perched on a hill surrounded by small pastures and woodlots.But things have been rough on the farm since August. That’s when Mr. Mehuren got a certified letter from Horizon Organic, which had been buying his milk for 16 years. It said it was terminating his contract in a year. Horizon delivered the same letter to 88 other organic dairy farms from Maine to New York.In December, Horizon gave all of the affected farmers a reprieve, extending their contracts until February 2023 and paying a bit more for the milk. But the future for small dairy farmers in the Northeast still appears difficult.For the past 20 years, organic milk offered a lifeline for small farms in the Northeast, allowing them to stay afloat while milking 100 cows or fewer. Now those farms are facing trouble because there is a lack of milk processors in the region and a glut of milk from huge organic dairies in Western states.On a brisk December morning, Mr. Mehuren and one of his daughters were milking their Holsteins in the small milking parlor, in six shifts of eight cows. His father was outside in a tractor, hauling hay. Mr. Mehuren quickly rattled off the names of the many nearby dairy farms that had failed over the past few decades. The farms that survived expanded, hoping that volume would offset low milk prices, he said.Organic milk has grown to account for more than 5 percent of the nation’s milk market.Tristan Spinski for The New York Times“Milk prices were very low in the early 2000s,” he said, and many small farmers felt the only options were to grow or die. “Then the organic deal kind of came along.”That gave smaller farmers a third option. Mr. Mehuren earned organic certification for his farm and dairy herd and began selling milk to Horizon in 2005.Since then, organic milk has grown to account for more than 5 percent of the nation’s milk market, and it is dominated by big businesses. Horizon Organic is owned by the French corporation Danone. Stonyfield Organic, the yogurt maker in New Hampshire that buys organic milk from New England farmers, is owned by Lactalis. And the farmer-owned cooperative Organic Valley, based in Wisconsin, now has more than a billion dollars in annual revenue.Meanwhile, bottling became consolidated in larger milk plants outside of New England. Ed Maltby, the executive director of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance, said nearly all packaged organic milk is now ultrapasteurized, giving it months of shelf life.“It used to be that you had your supply locally to your market,” Mr. Maltby said. “Now that paradigm has been turned on its head. The whole concept of regionality has disappeared.”Sarah Alexander, the executive director of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association, agreed.Glendon Mehuren II and Ms. Dickey, his daughter looking after a newborn calf. The farm got its organic certification in 2005.Tristan Spinski for The New York Times“If you go to a grocery store in Maine, there is Horizon milk on the shelves, and, yes, Horizon is picking up from 14 producers in Maine.” she said. “But the milk that’s on the shelves may be coming from Colorado, it may be coming from Ohio, it may be coming from Virginia.”Chris Adamo, the vice president for government affairs, policy and partnerships at Danone North America, said several factors contributed to Horizon’s withdrawal from New England.“The Northeast region provides a number of continuing challenges to pick up and transport milk to the processing facility we use in Western New York,” Mr. Adamo said in an emailed statement.“While the reduced mileage is important, it is only one factor,” he added. Mr. Adamo cited a scarcity of truck drivers as another.As Horizon withdraws, another challenge for organic dairy farmers in the Northeast is competition from larger farms.“There’s been an enormous growth of organic dairy farms west of the Mississippi — Texas, Colorado,” said Richard Kersbergen, a professor at the University of Maine’s Cooperative Extension program who has been working with Maine dairy farmers for 37 years. “That’s created a situation where these mega-organic dairy farms are able to produce organic milk at a much cheaper cost than those farms in the Northeast.”Organic milk has been a lifeline for small farms.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesMany of those farms milk fewer than 100 cows.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesOne company, Aurora Organic, has 27,000 dairy cows on four farms in Colorado and Texas, according to its website — the equivalent of about 500 small New England farms. Ms. Alexander called such operations “factory farms.”Amanda Beal, the commissioner of the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, said she was concerned that larger organic farms in the West were not being held to the same standards as those in the Northeast. Two rules for organic certification set by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have long been bones of contention: those requiring that organic livestock have access to pasture, and the “origin of livestock” rule limiting the conversion of conventional cows to organic.Ms. Beal said she would like to see the pasture rule more evenly enforced by organic certifiers nationwide. She said she also hoped that the U.S.D.A. would soon clarify the origin of livestock rule to eliminate loopholes used by larger dairies.“It creates an unlevel playing field for our farmers,” Ms. Beal said. “I feel if the playing field were level, our farmers could certainly hold their own.”Ms. Beal asked Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture, about this when she and her counterparts in other Northeast states met with him twice, via video, to discuss Horizon canceling the contracts.Ms. Beal understands organic dairy farms because she grew up on one. That farm, now run by her brother, is among those being dropped by Horizon.“I really want to emphasize that this isn’t about one farm or my family’s farm,” she said. “This is about 14 family farms in Maine and 89 family farms across the Northeast, and they are all, every single one of them, important.”At Faithful Venture Farm, while cleaning out the parlor between milkings, Mr. Mehuren said that he understood the trends in the dairy industry but that he didn’t think they were an improvement.“Having 10 farms milking 50 cows is hugely better for local economies than one 500-cow farm,” he said. “Consolidation seems to be the name of the game. The local hardware store closes and you have a Super Walmart.”Mr. Mehuren and other Maine farmers are hoping they will be able to sell their milk to Organic Valley or Stonyfield Organic, the only other commercial buyers for organic milk in the state.Cliff Bragg, left, with his father, Wayne, at their family’s organic dairy farm in Sidney, Maine.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesThree generations work the farm, which the Bragg family founded in 1772.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesHorizon’s extending contracts until 2023 was little consolation to Judy Smith on More Acres Farm in East Dixfield. Ms. Smith, 68, and her husband, Leslie, 77, had been milking 30 cows and selling to Horizon. They had been hoping to transfer the farm to their 40-year-old son. But Horizon’s August letter ended that dream. The uncertainty seemed too great, and they sold the dairy herd.“We were between a rock and a hard place,” Ms. Smith said. “We were heartbroken when those cows had to go, I’ll tell you what. They were more than just milk cows to us.” More

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    Biden’s China Dilemma: How to Enforce Trump’s Trade Deal

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    The Biden administration must decide whether to enforce a Trump-era trade deal that has not fulfilled its promise.WASHINGTON — When he assumed the White House, President Biden promised to take a different approach to China than his predecessor, saying that the Trump administration’s trade war had hurt American farmers and consumers, and failed to address significant concerns about China’s economic practices.But nearly a year into his presidency, Mr. Biden is stuck with ensuring that China lives up to the promises it made to President Donald J. Trump in a trade deal signed in January 2020.China is expected to fall far short of the trade deal’s target for purchasing an additional $200 billion of American products, including energy, services, food and manufactured goods, over the course of 2020 and 2021.According to tracking by Chad P. Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, China is on pace to fulfill only 60 percent of the purchasing commitments it made in the trade deal by the end of 2022, after buying fewer airplanes, automobiles, crude oil and other American goods than anticipated.Chinese officials, in conversations with their American counterparts, have cited the global pandemic, factory stoppages and shipping disruptions as reasons for the shortfalls, according to people familiar with the talks. It is unclear how receptive the Biden administration is to that argument or whether the president will take action against China for not living up to its end of the deal.The text of the trade deal calls for further consultations if an “unforeseeable event outside the control of the parties delays a party from timely complying with its obligations.” It also allows the United States to take “remedial measures,” like imposing tariffs, if China violates the agreement and the governments cannot reach a consensus on how to move forward.But many U.S. businesses and consumer groups have been calling for the Biden administration to reduce the tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese goods, which have driven up costs for American companies and consumers. The United States already has tariffs on roughly two-thirds of Chinese imports. Expanding tariffs to other goods could place a heavier burden on households and businesses at a time when prices are already rising.In a discussion with reporters last month, Katherine Tai, the U.S. Trade Representative, said that China’s “performance hasn’t been perfect, so what do we do about it?”“That’s the million dollar question. That’s the whole point of engaging with China right now.”“We’re working on it,” she added.The decision illustrates the perils for Mr. Biden of succeeding a president with a penchant for one-upmanship and a love of big round numbers.Mr. Trump received political credit, at least from his supporters, for signing the deal, which was arguably the most economic concessions the United States had secured from the Chinese government since it joined the World Trade Organization 20 years ago. But it is Mr. Biden and his deputies who now must decide the path forward — and incur the political risk — when the deal’s terms are not fully met.Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy, declined to discuss the negotiations, but said in a statement that the economic and trade relationships between the two countries were “essentially mutually beneficial.”“Issues in bilateral economic and trade relations should be properly dealt with in the spirit of mutual respect and equal-footed consultation,” he added.Trade experts say it’s not particularly surprising that China has failed to meet such ambitious purchasing targets. According to Mr. Trump’s own telling, some of the targets in his “big beautiful monster” of a trade deal with China were basically made up.Discussing the origin of the agricultural targets in a cabinet meeting in October 2019, Mr. Trump said he had pushed for China to commit to between $60 billion and $70 billion a year in farm purchases, before settling on a figure of between $40 billion and $50 billion.“My people had $20 billion done, and I said, ‘I want more.’ They said, ‘The farmers can’t handle it.’ I said, ‘Tell them to buy larger tractors. It’s very simple,’” Mr. Trump said to laughter.“I want the farmers to come tell me, ‘Sir, we can’t produce that much,’” he added.When Mr. Trump signed the trade deal with China in January 2020, those estimates became enshrined as the word of the U.S. government. And though Mr. Biden and his deputies have criticized the trade deal for failing to address many of the most pressing trade issues that the United States has with China, they have since promised to uphold it.In a call last month with President Xi Jinping of China, President Biden underscored the importance of China fulfilling the commitments, and his desire for “real progress” in conversations between Ms. Tai and her counterpart, Vice Premier Liu He, a senior administration official said.Both Chinese and American officials have stressed that purchasing commitments are just one component of the trade deal. The deal also contained promises to streamline China’s import process for U.S. farm goods, ramp up penalties for intellectual property infringement and ease barriers for American financial firms doing business in China, among other reforms.Ms. Tai has said she is pressing Chinese leaders on those other commitments, as well as on important trade issues that were not covered in the deal, like China’s use of industrial subsidies to bolster its industries.But she called the trade deal, which is often referred to as Phase 1, “a living agreement.”“This is the commitment that we bring as an administration to the agreements that the United States enters into with our trading partners, which is, yes, we are holding them accountable,” Ms. Tai said.China has come closest to satisfying its target commitments on agriculture, fulfilling 83 percent of the purchases it was expected to have made by the end of October under the deal, according to tracking by Mr. Bown.Corn and pork sales to China have been particularly strong, after an epidemic of African swine fever decimated China’s pig herds. But exports of American soybeans, lobster and other products appear to have fallen short, according to Mr. Bown’s estimates.For manufactured goods, including Boeing airplanes, cars, medical instruments, pharmaceuticals and industrial machinery, China had purchased only 60 percent of what it promised to buy by the end of October, Mr. Bown said. In that category, aircraft and automotive sales have disappointed, in part because of the grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max airplane. But China’s purchases of American semiconductors and medical products to fight coronavirus, which are also included in that category, have been stronger.At the end of October, China had purchased 37 percent of the energy products it should have purchased under the deal, following slow sales of crude oil, coal and refined energy products. But Mr. Bown said the targets in that particular sector were “astronomically large.”China has also made commitments on services, but Mr. Bown said the United States did not publish clear monthly data on services exports, making Beijing’s progress difficult to evaluate.“Even from the earliest months of the phase one agreement, China was not on track,” Mr. Bown said. “Obviously the pandemic started early in 2020, but a big chunk of it was just that the targets were unrealistic to begin with.”The Biden administration has sought to de-emphasize the purchases, saying they are developing other more important trade policies related to China.Several trade agreements with Europe that were announced in recent months show how the administration plans to pursue its China trade strategy beyond Mr. Trump’s deal. American and European leaders have announced that they plan to strengthen their trade ties in technology, civil aircraft and steel, setting new standards that benefit free-market democracies and welcoming more like-minded countries to join their trading club.Last week, the Biden administration announced a partnership with several other countries meant to control the export of sensitive technologies to authoritarian countries, and encourage other like-minded countries to adopt sanctions for corruption and human rights offenses.Daniel H. Rosen, a founding partner at Rhodium Group, a research group that focuses on China, said the U.S.-China trade deal was serving as a foundation for the relationship while the Biden administration works on recruiting allies to press for more important structural changes to China’s economy.“They’re trying to work with it, this thing that they inherited,” he said. More

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    Crunch at Ports May Mean Crisis for Family Farms

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    It’s just 60 miles from El Dorado Dairy in Ontario, Calif., to the nation’s largest container port in Los Angeles. But the farm is having little luck getting its products onto a ship headed for the foreign markets that are crucial to its business.The farm is part of one of the nation’s largest cooperatives, California Dairies Inc., which manufactures milk powder for factories in Southeast Asia and Mexico that use it to make candy, baby formula and other foods. The company typically ships 50 million pounds of its milk powder and butter out of ports each month. But roughly 60 percent of the company’s bookings on outbound vessels have been canceled or deferred in recent months, resulting in about $45 million in missed revenue per month.“This is not just a problem, it’s not just an inconvenience, it’s catastrophic,” said Brad Anderson, the chief executive of California Dairies.A supply chain crisis for imports has grabbed national headlines and attracted the attention of the Biden administration, as shoppers fret about securing gifts in time for the holidays and as strong consumer demand for couches, electronics, toys and clothing pushes inflation to its highest level in three decades.Yet another crisis is also unfolding for American farm exports.The same congestion at U.S. ports and shortage of truck drivers that has brought the flow of some goods to a halt has also left farmers struggling to get their cargo abroad and fulfill contracts before food supplies go bad. Ships now take weeks, rather than days, to unload at the ports, and backed-up shippers are so desperate to return to Asia to pick up more goods that they often leave the United States with empty containers rather than wait for American farmers to fill them up.The National Milk Producers Federation estimates that shipping disruptions have cost the U.S. dairy industry nearly $1 billion in the first half of the year in terms of higher shipping and inventory costs, lost export volume and price deterioration.“Exports are a huge issue for the U.S. right now,” said Jason Parker, the head of global trucking and intermodal at Flexport, a logistics company. “Getting exports out of the country is actually harder than getting imports into the country.”Agriculture accounts for about one-tenth of America’s goods exports, and roughly 20 percent of what U.S. farmers and ranchers produce is sent abroad. The industry depends on an intricate choreography of refrigerated trucks, railcars, cargo ships and warehouses that move fresh products around the globe, often seamlessly and unnoticed.U.S. farm exports have risen strongly this year, as the industry bounces back from the pandemic and benefits from a trade deal with China that required purchases of American agricultural products. Strong global demand for food and soaring commodities prices have lifted the value of U.S. agricultural exports more than 20 percent over last year.Still, exporters say they are leaving significant amounts of money on the table as a result of supply chain problems. And many farmers are now struggling to keep up with soaring costs for materials like fertilizer, air filters, pallets and packaging, as well as find farmhands and drivers to move their goods.A survey by the Agriculture Transportation Coalition, which represents exporters, found that 22 percent of foreign agriculture sales on average were being lost as a result of transportation challenges.Delays at ports have particularly hurt products that move in corrugated metal containers, like cheese, butter, meat, walnuts and cotton.One company, Talmera USA Inc., which exports milk powder, cheese and dairy ingredients like lactose, had a shipment delayed so many times that its load finally wound up on the original vessel it was assigned to after the ship had left the port in Seattle, circumnavigated Asia and returned weeks later.Mr. Anderson said that his company’s customers were beginning to look to suppliers in Europe, New Zealand and other countries for their purchases, even though the U.S. dairy industry has a reputation for high quality. “Frankly none of that matters to the customer if we can’t get it there,” he said.Part of the problem is that shipping companies are able to charge far more to ferry goods from Asia to the United States than vice versa, so they don’t want to waste time waiting for a less lucrative load departing from the West Coast.According to data from Freightos, an online freight marketplace, the cost to ship a 40-foot container from Asia to the U.S. West Coast soared to $18,730 in November — more than 17 times what it cost to make the reverse trip.As a result, more than 80 percent of the 434,000 20-foot containers exported out of the Port of Los Angeles in September were empty — up from about two-thirds in September 2020 and September 2019.Mario Cordero, the executive director of the Port of Long Beach, said that the price differential encouraged shipping companies to get their containers “back to Asia A.S.A.P. so you can load it with import items.”“And unfortunately the American exporter is impacted by this approach,” he said.El Dorado is part of one of the nation’s largest cooperatives, California Dairies, which manufactures milk powder for factories in Southeast Asia and Mexico.Adam Perez for The New York TimesThe company ships more than a thousand 20-foot containers of dairy products out of the country each month.Adam Perez for The New York TimesIn recent months, up to 60 percent of the company’s bookings on outbound vessels have been canceled.Adam Perez for The New York TimesA supply crunch in the trucking industry is also affecting farmers, as truckers find better pay and hours delivering holiday gifts than hauling soybeans and swine.Tony Clayton, the president of Clayton Agri-Marketing Inc., in Jefferson City, Mo, exports live animals around the world for breeding. He said the company is competing at both ports and airports for space for dairy heifers, swine and goats. And many livestock truckers have found that they can earn more hauling dry freight.“It is a challenge,” Mr. Clayton said. “We’re all fighting and competing for those people who will sit behind the steering wheel.”The infrastructure bill that Congress passed on Nov. 5 aims to remedy supply chain backlogs by investing $17 billion in American ports, many of which rank among the least efficient in the world.The bill also includes funding to improve railways, roads and waterways, as well as a provision to fund pop-up container yards outside the Port of Savannah, in Georgia, to ease congestion. It will also lower the minimum age of truckers who can cross state lines to 18, in a bid to attract more workers to a profession that has become a key bottleneck in supply chains.In September, the U.S. Department of Agriculture also announced it would dispense $500 million to help farmers deal with transportation challenges and rising materials costs.John D. Porcari, the Biden administration’s port envoy, said farm exports are a “primary focus” for the administration, and that the White House was trying to encourage private sector companies, including ocean carriers, to get the supply chain moving.The White House held a round table with agricultural exporters on Friday, and Mr. Porcari plans to visit the Port of Oakland, in California, one of the biggest export points for agriculture, this week.“We know that some sectors have had more trouble than others, and we’re working to eliminate those bottlenecks,” Mr. Porcari said in an interview. While agricultural exporters have welcomed long-term infrastructure investments, they remain concerned about more immediate losses. Mr. Anderson — whose company is responsible for nearly 10 percent of America’s milk supply and a fifth of American butter production — said he had been frustrated that much of the public dialogue from the government and in the media had focused more on consumer imports.“Are we going to get toys for Christmas? Are we going to get chips for automobiles? We think those are real concerns and they need to be talked about,” he said. “What’s not being talked about is the long-term damage being done to exporters in the world market and how that’s going to be devastating to our family farms.”El Dorado is a third-generation dairy. Delayed and canceled shipments are having a devastating impact on farmers’ finances.Adam Perez for The New York TimesIncreased costs for gasoline, trucking and warehouse storage are also contributing to food price inflation.Adam Perez for The New York TimesIt has been difficult for farmers, who must negotiate contracts in advance, to pass on higher costs for fuel, fertilizer, pallets and other products.Adam Perez for The New York TimesAgricultural exporters have had to get creative to bypass congested ports and warehouses. Mr. Anderson said his company was considering rerouting some shipments more than a thousand miles to the port in Vancouver.Mike Durkin, the chief executive of Leprino Foods Company, the world’s largest maker of mozzarella cheese, told House lawmakers this month that nearly all of the company’s 2021 ocean shipments had been canceled and rebooked for a later date. More than 100 of the company’s bookings this year had been canceled and rebooked 17 times, Mr. Durkin said, equating to a five-month delay in delivering their cheese.In the interim, Leprino Foods has had to pay to hold its cheese in refrigerated containers in carrier yards, racking up an additional $25 million in fees this year. More

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    John Deere Workers Strike After Failed Contract Talks

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    About 10,000 unionized employees walked out, as worker activism rises during nationwide labor shortages.Employees of Deere & Company formed picket lines after some 10,000 unionized workers went on strike to demand better pay and benefits at a time when the agriculture equipment maker was on track for a year of record profits.Meg Mclaughlin/Quad City Times, via Associated PressSome 10,000 unionized workers at the agriculture equipment maker Deere & Company went on strike early Thursday after overwhelmingly rejecting a contract proposal worked out with the company by negotiators for the United Automobile Workers union.“Our members at John Deere strike for the ability to earn a decent living, retire with dignity and establish fair work rules,” Chuck Browning, the director of the union’s agricultural department, said in a statement. “We stay committed to bargaining until our members’ goals are achieved.”Deere said it was “determined to reach an agreement” that would benefit workers. “We will keep working day and night to understand our employees’ priorities and resolve this strike, while also keeping our operations running for the benefit of all those we serve,” Brad Morris, the company’s vice president for labor relations, said in a statement.The strike deadline was announced on Sunday after the union said its members had voted down the tentative agreement reached on Oct. 1 with the company, which makes the John Deere brand of tractors. Union negotiators had said the proposal would provide “significant economic gains” and “the highest-quality health care benefits in the industry.”But workers, who are spread out across 14 facilities, primarily in Iowa and Illinois, criticized the deal for insufficiently increasing wages, for denying a traditional pension to new employees and for failing to substantially improve an incentive program that they consider stingy.“We’ve never had the deck stacked in our advantage the way it is now,” said Chris Laursen, a worker at a John Deere plant in Ottumwa, Iowa, who was president of his local there until recently.Mr. Laursen cited several sources of leverage for workers: the profitability of Deere & Company — which is on a pace to set a record of nearly $6 billion this fiscal year — as well as relatively high agricultural commodity prices and supply-chain bottlenecks resulting from the pandemic.“The company is reaping such rewards, but we’re fighting over crumbs here,” he said.Deere, long known to farmers for its green-and-yellow product line, is a publicly traded company valued at more than $100 billion. After a brief plunge early in the pandemic, its shares have tripled, far outpacing the overall market. They rose slightly on Thursday.Steve Volkmann, an analyst with the investment bank Jefferies, acknowledged that Deere was doing well. “Crop prices have increased with every other commodity,” he said, “and when farmers make money, they tend to buy equipment.” And he said Deere’s leadership in agricultural technology had helped make it more profitable.Mr. Volkmann said the financial damage from the labor dispute, if it was settled quickly, would be limited. The company’s bigger challenge, he said, comes from the pandemic’s disruption to the worldwide supply chain, which has caused shortages and raised prices for some components.“Deere is already under some stress,” he said. “They’re not producing at full capacity anyway — they just don’t have the parts.”As many employers grapple with worker shortages, workers across the country appear more willing to undertake strikes and other labor actions.Last week, more than 1,000 workers at Kellogg, the cereal maker, went on strike, and Mondelez International, which makes Oreos and other Nabisco snacks, experienced a work stoppage this summer. Coal miners in Alabama have been on strike for months. Workers have also waged prominent union campaigns at Amazon and Starbucks.Those on strike elsewhere in the country have raised similar complaints as the Deere employees, pointing out that they put in long hours as essential workers during the pandemic but are not sharing much of the profits that their companies reaped during that time.“There was no reprieve — everyone was working seven days a week,” said Dan Osborn, the president of a Kellogg workers local in Omaha.Mr. Osborn said his members were upset over a two-tier compensation system that they worry puts downward pressure on the wages and benefits of veteran workers. “Divide and conquer, it’s an age-old adage,” he said.The Facebook pages of some U.A.W. locals on Thursday encouraged workers to turn out for picketing, which one said would qualify them for strike pay and health insurance.Union members at General Motors walked off the job for almost six weeks in 2019 before agreeing to a four-year contract that included substantial wage increases and closed disparities in a two-tier wage structure.Under the tentative deal at Deere, wages would have increased 5 or 6 percent this year, depending on a worker’s pay grade, and then an additional 3 percent each in 2023 and 2025.Pension benefits would have increased but would have remained substantially lower for workers hired after 1997, and many workers were disappointed to see benefits eliminated for new hires, Mr. Laursen said.Other workers are perturbed about the lack of health care benefits for retirees, which also ceased for workers hired after 1997.Analysts suggested that Deere might be wary of taking on additional long-term obligations because its current level of profitability is unlikely to last.“It’s a very cyclical business,” said Ann Duignan, an analyst with J.P. Morgan. “They may be having record profits this year, but we believe we are close to a peak.”Many workers were frustrated with similar elements of the last contract that the union negotiated with Deere, in 2015, and had been anticipating a showdown ever since.“I’ve been saving since the last contract,” said Toby Munley, a Deere electrician in Ottumwa, where U.A.W. members voted to reject the previous contract, as did another local in Iowa. “People were feeling it then.” That contract was narrowly approved overall.Looming over the negotiation is suspicion among rank-and-file workers toward the international union after a series of scandals in recent years involving corruption in the union and illegal payoffs to union officials from executives at the company then known as Fiat Chrysler.The scandals led to more than 15 convictions, including those of two recent U.A.W. presidents.Mr. Munley said he had worried that the U.A.W. would try to negotiate a marginally better deal and sell the membership on it before the strike deadline Wednesday night, but said he was encouraged that the union had held firm.“I was happy to see we didn’t come back with a tentative agreement,” he said. “It restored some of my faith in my international.”Nelson D. Schwartz More

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    When Heat Waves, Wildfires and Drought Grip Oregon and Washington

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    In early summer, a day laborer laying irrigation lines at a plant nursery just south of Portland, Ore., collapsed to the ground and died. His official cause of death was declared “heat related.”It was 104 degrees out — several days into a brutal heat wave whose like has become increasingly commonplace in many parts of the country. Mussels and clams baked in their shells along the Washington coast. Record temperatures and fierce winds fueled one of the largest wildfires in the United States.Drought, megafires and heat waves are descending on the Pacific Northwest as the effects of climate change alter the landscape. They have forced farm owners, fieldworkers and state regulators to navigate newly extreme conditions.But visits to several farms in the Rogue Valley in Oregon and in Southern Washington over the last month showed that the response can often feel improvised, and at times inadequate.Workers during the watermelon harvest last month in Sunnyside, Wash.A tractor hauling freshly harvested watermelons passes the only form of shade on this farm in Sunnyside.A farmworker in Phoenix, Ore., took a break on Monday.Policymakers in Oregon and Washington have recently established safety regulations to protect workers. Just after the punishing heat wave in June, Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon directed the state’s Occupational Health and Safety agency to adopt emergency rules for any workplace where conditions could lead to heat illness.The rules, which took effect Aug. 9, require employers to provide access to shade and cool drinking water in farms and other outdoor places when temperatures reach 80 degrees, with additional requirements to offer more breaks and periodic wellness checks when it reaches 90 degrees.The rules also require employers that provide temporary housing to field workers, like those with H-2A agricultural visas, to keep rooms at 78 degrees or below. Washington State this year created similar emergency rules to manage extreme weather patterns, joining Minnesota and California, which have also imposed heat safety regulations that apply to farms in recent years.The new protections on the ground in the Northwest can look thrown together: plastic benches roasting in the sun, pop-up tents for shade, drinks laid out in kiddie pools.An apple-picking crew during lunch in Sunnyside, Wash., last month.Volunteers with the United Farm Workers union preparing drinks to hand out last month.Farms have also begun shifts that run at odd hours or overnight to battle the heat.During the 2-6 a.m. shift on a pear orchard in Zillah, Wash.Picking pears at night in Zillah to fight the heat.The Oregon Farm Bureau, an industry group, has supported the new rules, noting that many of its farmers already carry out safety measures that include access to shade, water and extra breaks on their farms. But the group also said that adopting all of the rules has been challenging because they took effect during the middle of the harvest season.“At some point, there is a breaking point in terms of rules and regulations and natural disasters,” said Anne Marie Moss, a spokeswoman for the group. “We need more federal and state government programs for farms to stay sustainable.”Employees of a farm in Southern Oregon, who asked to not be identified out of fear of retribution by their employer, this week described cramped living conditions in temporary housing that made escaping the outside heat difficult.At one unit, with little protection from the elements, the windows were fully covered to keep the heat and light out. In a 20-square-foot room with six bunk beds stacked in rows, small fans were tied to beds with pieces of cloth.Sheets cover the windows to keep heat and sun out of employee housing on a farm in Southern Oregon.A worker inside the employee housing unit where several bunk beds are crammed into a room.Wildfires have also generated some of the poorest air quality in the country. This week, laborers in Medford worked under 94-degree temperatures with an air quality index of 154 — a level considered to be unhealthy by federal standards.The new emergency rules in Oregon mandate that employers provide masks that block very fine particulate matter to field workers when the air quality index reaches 100.The hazards of air quality and heat are magnified by the continued risk of the coronavirus pandemic. The Medford area has had among the highest growth rates of Covid cases in the United States.N95 masks were handed out to workers in Sunnyside, Wash., last month when the air quality began to deteriorate.One worker on a vineyard in Medford, who asked to be identified only as Beatriz because of her insecure status as a migrant worker from Mexico, said field conditions had become exceptionally harsh recently. She noted that while her employer supplies the workers with water, there is little shade for taking cover during her 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. shifts.The heat and wildfire smoke worry her, but not because of health concerns. Beatriz, 38, like many others, is paid by what she can pick. “The grape goes to waste with the smoke,” she said. “It affects our pay also, because we don’t get paid for bad grapes.”Blueberries scorched by high temperatures in Albany, Ore.Some farm owners have questioned whether they should be in business at all. Instead of picking pears, people this week at Meyer Orchards in Medford were cutting down trees, dismantling a farm that had been operating for over a century.Oregon, like much of the West, is gripped by drought. Large parts of the state have exceptionally low levels of water, according to the United States Drought Monitor, including the river valley where the Meyer orchard sits. The outlook is not promising either, according to forecasters.Workers at Meyer Orchards chopping down pear trees.“There has never been a drought this severe,” said Kurt Meyer, who is the fourth generation to run the orchard. “After 111 years, we didn’t have much of a choice. You can’t farm without water.”The orchard is 115 acres, and Mr. Meyer estimates that it costs up to $350,000 a year to grow the fruit. This year, he said, there’s no return on that money.“The industry will have to go to where there’s water,” Mr. Meyer said. “I don’t see the Rogue Valley being a big farming community anymore.”Empty crates for picking apples line an orchard field and back road during a morning harvest shift in Sunnyside. More

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    Utah Farm Draws a Rare Breed: The American Shepherd

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    DIXIE NATIONAL FOREST, Utah — “The object is to keep ’em grazing,” Scott Stubbs said as he looked over the 1,470 ewes and lambs chewing up Castle Valley’s dandelions, clover and grasses. “Get them full, which makes them fat.”Mr. Stubbs, a fifth-generation sheep farmer in southern Utah, did not expect to be giving a hands-on shepherding seminar this summer, but he was stuck. He needed a second experienced herder, and the one who was supposed to arrive in the spring from Peru did not get approval for a special agricultural visa. Now backlogs at some foreign passport offices and American consulates — compounded by the pandemic — were delaying a replacement.That’s why Mr. Stubbs last month ended up hiring Duane Rogers, a type of worker rarer than a blue lamb in these parts: an American-born beginner who was eager to herd sheep.Labor shortages are common this summer, especially in Utah, where the unemployment rate is 2.7 percent. The Marriott in Cedar City did not have enough maids to offer daily housekeeping, and the Denny’s outside of Beaver had a sign on the door asking customers to be patient with a short-handed staff. But the predicament that Mr. Stubbs and farmers like him are facing is of longer standing and more severe.“Nobody wants this type of work,” Mr. Stubbs said of herding and farm labor. And most American-born workers haven’t wanted it in a while — at least at the wages that most farmers say they can afford. That is why more than 200,000 temporary foreign farm workers, mostly from Mexico, were allowed into the United States last year to pick cherries, tomatoes and tobacco or to tend livestock. The number of visas issued has more than tripled since 2011, and it increased in 2020 despite the pandemic, after food and agricultural workers were characterized as part of the essential work force.Mr. Stubbs, 54, started using the agricultural visa program, known as H-2A, eight years ago. Through an agency, he hired a Peruvian, Ronal Leon Parejas, who is still with him.Before then, aside from family members or the occasional high school student who would pitch in for a few weeks, the only people in recent years willing to herd sheep were Native Americans or undocumented immigrants, Mr. Stubbs said. This year, the Navajo herder who had been working for him needed a knee operation. At 68, he probably wouldn’t be coming back.“You put a small flock out, but you can’t get labor,” said Mr. Stubbs, who raises his flock for both wool and meat. “It’s putting a hurt on.”Mr. Stubbs, who was 5 or 6 years old when his grandfather taught him how to move a flock from meadow to creek on the federal forest land where his family has had grazing rights since the 1800s, knows it is a hard and lonely job. His first month herding alone was after eighth grade. “I thought I would die,” he said, even though his mother drove from their farm nearly 20 miles away each day to check on him. “I lost 30 pounds in 30 days.”A herder has to stay with the sheep 24 hours a day through the roughly 10-month period on the open range, in sun and rain, hail and snow, whether temperatures climb toward 100 degrees or drop below zero. The workday begins at sunup and ends at sundown, although there may be nights when you need to help the guard dogs scare off a coyote or a mountain lion. There are no weekends or holidays off.The H-2A program has been criticized for low wages and lack of worker protections. For workers under the visa program, the pay is set by the government, and has increased in recent years. In Utah, it is $1,728 a month plus transportation, room and board. In this case, the room is a 14-by-8-foot sheep wagon that has a bed, a wood-fire stove, a gas grill and a cooler. Mr. Stubbs delivers requested food — eggs, bacon, sandwich meat, bread, potato chips, cookies, soda and cans of chile and corn — every few days, along with water.And that is the deal that Mr. Rogers accepted three weeks ago. “I’m grateful that Scott gave me a chance,” he said.Mr. Rogers prepared dinner in his trailer near the grazing area where he herds sheep.A herder has to stay with the sheep 24 hours a day through the nine-month grazing period.Marty Stubbs, who is training Mr. Rogers, roped a lamb that was showing signs of a possible injury.Mr. Rogers, left, assisted Mr. Stubbs with the injured lamb.Mr. Rogers pulled on his tan leather gloves. “I love being in the mountains, and I don’t mind being alone,” he said. His wife, whom he met a few years ago on Western Match, an online dating service for cowboys and “country folk,” lives in South Texas with his stepson and two step-granddaughters. He arrived in Utah with five dogs and his father’s old saddle.At 58, Mr. Rogers has tried his hand at various jobs. He grew up in Hayden, Colo., where his father owned a small farm and raised some cattle and sheep. He served in the military for 12 years and did a tour in Panama before joining the National Guard. In addition to herding cattle and working as a ranch hand, he has driven trucks, maintained highways, worked in construction, plowed snow and guarded women and children who had been arrested at the border and locked up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers — a job he said he hated because of the conditions.During a long rehabilitation after a truck wreck in 2017, Mr. Rogers said, he spent a lot of time thinking about what he wanted to do. He had looked after small flocks of sheep in enclosed areas, but the idea of working a large open-range herd had always exerted a magnetic pull. He was fascinated by the nomadic life, and had watched dozens of documentaries about it. And he was excited to train his dogs to herd sheep.He was unemployed when he saw the advertisement on the state’s job listing site and applied.“I like cattle, but sheep are a lot more entertaining,” and a lot smarter than people give them credit for, he said. “The lambs do some of the funniest things. In the morning, when they’re feeling good, they’ll climb up on the rocks and play king of the mountain.”The sheep were offering a symphony of guttural bleats punctuated with hollow tongs from bells dangling round their necks as Mr. Rogers and the dogs directed them toward a noonday water break. As the ewes and lambs shuffled forward, they kicked up swarms of grasshoppers that can strip a green field faster than any herd. It is one of several travails plaguing Western farmers this season, along with extreme heat and a prolonged drought that are shrinking harvests and killing off grazing land.The delay in hiring a second herder provided Mr. Stubbs with another challenge. Because he had no one to take the sheep to graze, he had to keep them on the farm, feeding them bales of hay he might otherwise have sold.Over the past few weeks, his son Marty has been helping train Mr. Rogers to herd, so he has not been around to help his father with farm work or tend to his own sheepshearing business. There are many days, Mr. Stubbs said, when he and his teenage daughter ended up working till midnight.One morning, Marty Stubbs caught sight of a small white lamb that wasn’t using his hind left leg. He rode after him, threw up a loop of rope and in a single swing lassoed his back legs. He jumped off a chestnut horse named Trigger and held down the lamb, pushing his left knee against the animal’s stomach. He examined the hind hoof, poking with a knife to loosen a stuck rock or thorn.Mr. Rogers took a brown bottle of penicillin and a large syringe out of his saddle bag.“How many CC’s you want?” he asked.“Six,” Marty replied.He closed his knife, took the needle and jabbed it into the lamb’s hindquarter and then marked the animal’s back with an orange line in chalk. He lifted his knee, and the lamb hobbled away.“If you know where they’re going, it’s OK,” Marty said of keeping track of the sheep. “The problem is if you don’t know where they are and you have to find them.”Knowing where the flock is likely to head, though, is something that only comes through experience. Mr. Parejas said it wasn’t until his fourth year that he felt truly comfortable.His herd was about 10 miles east of Mr. Rogers’s, and he was getting ready to move them across Highway 143, through thick clusters of pinyon pine and juniper, spruce and white quaking aspens, up Haycock Mountain. As the sheep fanned out across the road — they have the right of way — lines of cars and trucks backed up on either side of the double yellow line, their passengers alternately irritated and enchanted by the woolly procession.Sheep herded by Ronal Leon Parejas, a Peruvian herder, crossed Highway 143. Mr. Parejas, left, has not been able to return to Peru to visit his 4-year-old son since February 2020, before the pandemic hit.“It’s very hard and very lonely,” he said through a translator. “I miss my family.”Juan Arredondo for The New York TimesFor Mr. Rogers, left, the idea of working a large open-range herd has always exerted a magnetic pull. Mr. Parejas, 32, has not been able to return to his own small farm in Peru or his 4-year-old son since February 2020, before the pandemic hit. He hopes to visit in December, when the season ends, as long as it doesn’t interfere with his efforts to get a green card — a prize that would enable him to work and live in the United States without restrictions.“It’s very hard and very lonely,” he said through a translator. “I miss my family.” Still, it is better now than during his first couple of years, when he lacked a cellphone with WhatsApp and Facebook to keep in touch.He remembers his first night trying to sleep in the desert, when he heard a coyote howl. “I almost cried,” Mr. Parejas said.Now he is trying to help his nephew get an H-2A visa so he can also work for Mr. Stubbs. He said that he could probably earn as much if not more an hour in Peru, but that getting an employer back home to pay what he owes can be a trial. Working here delivers a dependable paycheck, he said.Mr. Rogers, too, appreciates the reliable paychecks and the fact that he has no expenses during the season and can bank his entire wage. He hopes to start paying down a large debt.Even so, he says that for him, the earnings are secondary. “Money isn’t everything, living is everything,” he said. “All you leave behind is your story, and this is a good story to tell my grandkids.” More

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    Banks Fight $4 Billion Debt Relief Plan for Black Farmers

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    Lenders are pressuring the Agriculture Department to give them more money, saying quick repayments will cut into profits.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration’s efforts to provide $4 billion in debt relief to minority farmers is encountering stiff resistance from banks, which are complaining that the government initiative to pay off the loans of borrowers who have faced decades of financial discrimination will cut into their profits and hurt investors. More