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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

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    Why India's Farmers Are Protesting

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyIndia’s Farmer Protests ExplainedThousands of protesters, many driving tractors, took to the streets of New Delhi on Tuesday. Who are they, and what do they want?Indian farmers taking part in a tractor rally in New Delhi on Tuesday against the central government’s new agricultural laws.Credit…Money Sharma/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMujib Mashal, Emily Schmall and Jan. 27, 2021Updated 7:42 a.m. ETAt least one protester was killed and 300 police officers were injured after tens of thousands of farmers, many driving tractors, took to the streets of New Delhi on Tuesday to call for the repeal of contentious new agriculture laws.After months of sustained but peaceful demonstrations on the city’s outskirts, the farmers upstaged the city’s national Republic Day holiday, clashing with the police, destroying barricades and storming the Red Fort, a 400-year-old landmark. In addition to the police officers, many protesters were injured as well.On Wednesday, the day after the chaos, the farmers had returned to their camps on the city’s edge, pledging to continue their protest and to return to the city for a march on foot to India’s Parliament on Monday.Protesting farmers have camped outside New Delhi since November.Credit…Saumya Khandelwal for The New York TimesWho are the protesters?Many of the protesting farmers are members of the Sikh religious minority and come from the states of Punjab and Haryana. Farmers in other parts of the country have held rallies in solidarity.Since November, thousands of farmers have encamped outside New Delhi, the capital, keeping vigil in sprawling tent cities and threatening to enter if the farm laws were not repealed.The protest has laid bare the dire reality of inequality across much of the country.More than 60 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people still depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood, though the sector accounts for only about 15 percent of the country’s economic output. Their reliance has only increased after the coronavirus pandemic badly struck the urban economy and sent millions of laborers back to their villages. For years, debts and bankruptcies have been driving farmers to high rates of suicide.The grain market in the Indian city of Khanna, the largest in Asia, last year.Credit…Karan Deep Singh/The New York TimesWhat do they want?The protesters are challenging Prime Minister Narendra Modi over his efforts to reshape farming in India.The demonstrators are demanding that Mr. Modi repeal recent farming laws that would minimize the government’s role in agriculture and open more space for private investors. The government says the new laws would unshackle farmers and private investment, bringing growth. But farmers are skeptical, fearing that the removal of state protections that they already consider insufficient would leave them at the mercy of greedy corporations.Government support for farmers, which included guaranteed minimum prices for certain essential crops, helped India move past the hunger crisis of the 1960s. But with India liberalizing its economy in recent decades, Mr. Modi — who wants the country’s economy to nearly double by 2024 — sees such a large role for the government as no longer sustainable.Farmers, however, contend that they are struggling even with the existing protections. They say that market-friendly laws will eventually eliminate regulatory support and leave them bereft, with the weakened economy offering little chance of a different livelihood.Farmers trying to dismantle barricades during the Republic Day protest on Tuesday.Credit…Anushree Fadnavis/ReutersHow did the violence erupt?Thousands of protesting farmers poured into New Delhi on Tuesday in what had been expected to be a peaceful protest during holiday celebrations and a military parade overseen by the prime minister.Some farmers broke with the main march and used tractors to dismantle police barricades. Many farmers carried long swords, tridents, sharp daggers and battle axes — functional if largely ceremonial weapons. Most protesters did not seem to be wearing masks despite the Covid-19 outbreak in India.Police commanders deployed officers carrying assault rifles. They stood in the middle of main roads, tear gas swirling around them with their rifles aimed at the crowds. In some areas, video footage showed, the police beat protesters with their batons to push them back.The farmers claim the violence was stoked by the government and outside elements in an effort to derail their months of peaceful protest.The farmers waved flags and taunted officers. They also breached the Red Fort, the iconic palace that once served as the residence of the Mughal rulers of India, and hoisted atop the ramparts a flag that is often flown on Sikh temples.Local television channels showed farmers placing the body of a protester in the middle of a road. They claimed the man had been shot, but the police said he had died when his tractor overturned.The Indian government temporarily suspended internet services across the areas that have been hubs of protest for months, an official at the Home Affairs Ministry confirmed.A farmer inside a tractor trolley amid the march into the capital on Tuesday. Credit…Altaf Qadri/Associated PressAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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