Agricultural concerns are—of course—essential businesses. The industry continues to work during this time, but it faces logistical and labor challenges.

The Spokesman-Review has a good story on the logistics:

While items from flour to eggs have been flying off supermarket shelves, including a wild run on apples, that hasn’t immediately helped farmers in Washington, several industry experts said.

The higher demand at grocery stores hasn’t covered the market drop for milk, beef and produce that had been sold to restaurants.

“So far, agriculture is doing better than equities,” said Randy Fortenbery, an agriculture economist at Washington State University. “But the risk is not so much what happens to prices, it’s more what happens to logistics.

“If we have problems getting product to port and vessels out to sea, that’s where we’ll see some potential problems.”

(On the high demand for apples, the story quotes Tim Kovis of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association: “Two weeks ago, we moved just under 3.9 million boxes of apples. That’s 400,000 boxes more than the previous record. So clearly there is a strong domestic demand for apples.”)

The Wall Street Journal reports that last month the Trump administration

. . . rattled nerves in the agricultural sector when it curtailed visa-processing activities in offices across Mexico, throwing a wrench in the program that last year certified visas for a record 257,667 temporary agricultural workers, mostly from Mexico. The move threatened to leave farm owners strapped for labor and disrupt the flow of fresh produce as consumers are clearing supermarket shelves of food.

The administration subsequently eased those restrictions following warnings of a labor shortage, though companies remain concerned about delays and people’s willingness to report for work in the U.S. in the midst of a public health crisis.

This is the H-2A program, which allows for the temporary employment of foreign agricultural workers. The question of whether H-2A workers can get to work in the U.S. is very important for Washington’s agricultural industry: In FY 2019, H-2A positions certified by the U.S. Department of Labor totaled 26,226 in Washington. That was 10.2 percent of total H-2A positions and third highest in the country.