News

Asparagus farmers lack labor

Michigan asparagus harvest is underway.  John Bakker, Executive Director of the Michigan Asparagus Advisory Board, says the crop is ahead of normal.

“We have had kind of odd weather starting the season, we’ve escaped any frost to-date so we’re fortunate with that.”  He tells Brownfield, “The unfortunate thing is that we’ve had two very warm spells.”

Bakker says the warm weather pushed production along in some fields and he says many growers aren’t prepared.

“We’ve not had enough labor to keep up with that, and so basically for the last two weekends some asparagus has gotten mowed off.”

Bakker says when a farmer mows off an asparagus crop the grower can lose up to three harvests, the one that’s too tall for the market, the one growing at market size and the one that is just short of harvest.  One asparagus field can be hand harvested more than eight times in a season to pick stalks at market size.

Bakker tells Brownfield mowing a field can cost the farmer a thousand pounds to the acre of production.

AUDIO: Interview with John Baker (1:49 mp3):