Column: Thoughts from the Tractor Seat, When Labor Costs Dig Deeper Than Tariffs
By Ken Polehn
The Dalles, Ore,. April 15, 2025 — If you've followed agriculture news in recent years, you'd think the biggest threat to American farmers is a trade war with China. Tariffs get the headlines. They make good sound bites. But here in the Pacific Northwest—where apples, pears, and cherries still depend on hands, not machines—the real crisis isn’t across the ocean. It’s right here in the paycheck.
According to a recent article from FreshFruitPortal.com, Mark Powers, President of the Northwest Horticultural Council, said plainly what many of us have been living: tariffs aren't the top concern anymore—labor costs are.
He’s right.
We've been sounding the alarm for years. While policy makers and economists squabble over trade agreements, we’ve been calculating how to break even when 99% of our returns are swallowed by labor costs. Yes, you read that correctly—99%. That’s not sustainable. That’s survival on a knife’s edge.
We grow fruit that must be hand-picked. No robot or combine can climb a ladder into a cherry tree or gently twist a ripe pear off its stem. This kind of work takes people who are skilled, experienced, and reliable people. And while we’re grateful for our workers, the system that governs their wages is out of touch with the economic reality on the farm.
The H-2A program, meant to ensure a stable workforce, has instead become a runaway cost center. Wages are determined by bureaucratic formulas that ignore market conditions, regional differences, and crop value. Every year, the labor cost creeps up—127% over the last decade, according to the same article. Meanwhile, crop prices remain flat or fall, and regulatory compliance costs pile on.
When policy ignores the practical, farmers pay the price. Sometimes, literally. Last year, I destroyed $30,000 worth of sweet cherries—not because they weren’t safe or marketable, but because I missed a piece of compliance paperwork. That’s the world we’re operating in.
This isn't just a farmer’s problem. It’s a national one. If we want American-grown fruit in our grocery stores and on our tables, we need to stop pretending this nis about trade wars and start talking about the real war: the slow strangulation of family farms by unsustainable costs and disconnected policy.
It’s time for a different kind of “liberation day”—one where we free ourselves from the false narratives and focus on the policies that can actually preserve the backbone of American agriculture.
From this tractor seat, I see a future where we either fix it—or rip out the orchard.
About the author:
I was born in 1961 into a second-generation farm family in The Dalles. I grew up on a tractor seat, moving irrigation pipe with my sisters before school, and spent my summers picking cherries alongside the children of migrant families who returned year after year. My wife, children, and parents have all worked the same land. I’ve served as county Farm Bureau president, sat on the county fair board, and continue to support 4-H and FFA. I’ve seen firsthand what happens when farmers are squeezed out—not just of business, but of the conversation.
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