Basin growers expect changes with new administration

MOSES LAKE — President-elect Donald Trump’s road to the White House was based, in part, on strong support for rural America. The New York City real estate mogul doesn’t have a record on agriculture policy, but he has vowed to keep the farm bill together, go big on infrastructure, slash regulations and re-negotiate trade deals.

It is still too early to tell how much of the campaign rhetoric will become fact, but there is a sense of hope in the Columbia Basin.

“We were actually in Washington D.C. last week meeting with our congressional delegation trying to get an idea of what might be going forward, what might be dead,” said Washington State Potato Commission executive director Chris Voigt. “President-elect Trump’s promise to roll back some of the (EPA) regulations that were put into place by the previous administration are important. I think it will help build jobs and put people back to work in the rural areas.”

The President-elect stated continuously during his campaign that family farms are the backbone of this country and called the “EPA intrusion” a disgrace and an added expense to American farmers.

Dale Pomeroy is a current commissioner at the Port of Warden. He is also on the board of directors of the Warden Development League and the Columbia Basin Development League, and is in his fifth year on the board of the Grant County Economic Development Council, where he is a past president. He has seen a lot of changes since he started farming in 1970.

“He may make it easier on agriculture and a lot of the industries by removing some of these rules and regulations that are getting tough on us,” said Pomeroy, who started farming with sugar beets, supplying the sugar plant in Moses Lake, before evolving into specialty crops like seed corn and wheat seed. “We don’t want to get to the point where we start dropping our oil on the road like we used to do. But I think there’s some room for improvement.”

Longtime Columbia Basin hay grower John Treston echoed those thoughts on environmental regulations strangling farming efforts.

“I’m not against protecting the environment from things that destroy it, but sometimes there so much in place that it makes it difficult to produce,” Treston said. “I think Trump will be good for the farmers. Even if he accomplishes half what he said he wanted to do, it would be good getting people back to work.”

However, there are some concerns, Voigt said. During the election campaign, candidate Trump hammered relentlessly at the “very bad” free trade deals Washington has signed or negotiated, particularly with two of the United States’ top trading partners, Mexico and China.

Trump is on record as saying he intends to pull the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership on his first day in office. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade agreement among twelve of the Pacific Rim countries and is currently awaiting ratification to enter into force. The 30 chapters of the agreement aim to “promote economic growth; support the creation and retention of jobs; raise living standards; reduce poverty and enhanced labor and environmental protections."

“Pulling out of TPP is a little concerning to us,” Voigt said. “We export roughly 60 percent of what we grow. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was an excellent opportunity to expand trade, expand markets and to be able to sell raw potatoes and potato products. The TPP was a great opportunity for all of Washington state agriculture.

“The thing is, if we don’t do this trade agreement with the Pacific Rim, our competition is. If we don’t approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it’s not only going to stop the growth of our export, it’s going to contract it because the rest of the world is still signing these free trade agreements.”

The other major trade agreement, North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), in which the U.S. exports to Canada and Mexico, has unlocked opportunity for millions of Americans by supporting made-in-America jobs and exports. Since NAFTA’s implementation, states like Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Washington and many others have seen a surge in exports across North American borders.

“NAFTA has been incredibly good for potatoes, particularly in Mexico,” Voigt said. “Mexico was essentially a zero-dollar market for us prior to NAFTA. Once NAFTA went into effect we were able to get rid of all those tariffs. Now, it’s a $100-million dollar market for us, which is huge. If we were to pull out of NAFTA and lose an opportunity to send $100 million dollars to Mexico, that’d be a big hit to the Columbia Basin. People would lose their jobs over it – from the growers to the processing plants.”

Another area of concern is the President-elect’s stance on immigration. Agriculture has an estimated 2 million workers that are in the U.S. illegally, according to Western Farmer-Stockman. Here in Columbia Basin, farmers must have access to needed workers. They are closely watching the new administration's key components of farm labor immigration.

“We have to figure out how to fix that broken immigration system, but we still require labor,” Voigt said. “We get the need for enforcement. We have to have a comprehensive fix to the entire system, not just bits and pieces. We have to provide protection to our border, but we also have to create a good guest-worker program that farmers can bring in workers from other countries to do the work that Americans won’t do.”

The Columbia Basin and the world are watching to see where the new administration will take American farming.