Backlogs choke agricultural exports
Farmers have trouble getting crops shipped
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Amid an historic drought posing threats to harvests, California farmers say they have no way to export the crops they do have because of a kink in the global supply chain that has left container ships lined up off the Southern California coast with nowhere to deliver their goods.
Problems with the supply chain have retailers worried their shelves — and their customers’ online shopping carts — will be empty during the holiday shopping season, prompting emergency actions from state and federal leaders to clear up the logjam.
But the backlog of ships entering U.S. waters also means there are fewer making the trek back across the Pacific Ocean, leaving the farmers in one of the nation’s most important agriculture regions with nowhere to send their products.
“We’re at the mercy of foreign shipping companies,” said Roger Isom, president and CEO of the California Cotton Ginners and Growers Association and the Western Agricultural Processors Association. “We’re in a game, somebody changed the rules on us, and we have no way to correct it.”
California is the nation’s biggest supplier of tree nuts — almonds, walnuts and pistachios. Most of them are sold to other countries, totaling more than $8.1 billion in exports in 2019, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
But last month, Isom said more than 80 percent of scheduled shipments were canceled. Processors have resorted to paying much more to ship their products to other ports, sending pistachios and walnuts by train to Texas and Maryland and flying bales of cotton to Peru. Isom said they are losing money on these sales, but they have to do it or else risk losing their customers.
It’s particularly a problem for walnuts, which are in high demand in Europe for the Christmas holiday. But Isom said California’s orders are “now being filled by other countries.”
“One of our members lost $7.5 million in one month of sales because of an inability to fill timely commitments,” Isom told state lawmakers on Wednesday during an informational hearing on the global supply chain problems.
One reason for the shortage of ships is the intense demand for products has driven shipping prices so high that many ocean carriers simply hurry back to Asia once they leave Southern California, bypassing the smaller port in Oakland, where most of the state’s tree nuts are shipped.