Global shipping problems impact Kittitas County exporters

from 2021 Spring Ag Journal

Scientists in U.S. and Canada set to battle murder hornets

By KARL HOLAPPA staff writer

Although growers can rejoice in the positive news related to water supply going into the 2021 growing season, exporters are looking at an entirely separate headache: how to get local crops shipped to consumers overseas.

In interviews with Kittitas Valley exporters, the logistic issue created by the pandemic is far from resolving itself, with West Coast ports still clogged and struggling to get containers matched with ships traveling to Asia. Agricultural commodities, including Kittitas Valley timothy hay and alfalfa are not immune to these issues, and the struggle has both exporters and purchasers working on finding creative solutions to ensure animals get fed on the other side of the ocean.

“There’s not a glimmer of hope on the near-term horizon,” Wesco International President Don Schilling said of the shipping crunch.

In a meeting last week with 8th District U.S. Rep. Kim Schrier’s office and shipping terminal operators, Schilling said the conversation pivoted to the need to reroute container ships from the Port of Long Beach in California to the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma due to capacity issues.

“That’s only going to make our situation worse,” he said.

Mike Hajny with Hajny Trading said the shipping issue has been the major challenge coming out of the pandemic. He said his company has had to hire extra employees to handle the logistics issues related to getting the hay to customers.

“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time managing bookings and adjusting A Washington state ferry sails past a loaded container ship anchored in Elliott Bay near downtown in this 2014 photo. The pandemic has caused worldwide shipping problems which are impacting Kittitas County growers. schedules to match customer’s needs,” he said.

Anderson Hay & Grain CEO Mark Anderson said the alligator closest to his outfit’s boat is working on getting product that currently sits on the lot shipped to customers as soon as possible. He said the shipping crunch has made it so the product can’t even be considered carryover, because it would have been gone already had it not been for the logistical headache being dealt with now.

“Shipping is a complete nightmare right now,” he said. “We don’t even know what can be delivered to the port from day to day. Terminals are all backed up, and the plan changes every day. It’s creating all kinds of chaos.”

Although Anderson said the challenges related to shipping really began to develop last fall, the bottleneck accelerated in January and has progressively gotten worse since then.

“There’s ships anchored in Los Angeles,” he said. “There’s blank sailings and they don’t know when they’re calling ports. Once they do, it’s happening all at once and the terminals can’t handle the capacity.”

The inability of the ports to handle the erratic shipping schedules from a capacity perspective means exporter’s trucks and containers are stuck in the bottleneck. The recent grounding of the container ship in the Suez Canal isn’t helping things either. Anderson said they anticipate shipping schedules to change in the coming weeks to accommodate the backup created by that incident.

“The shipping thing was nothing in early fall compared to what it is today,” he said.

As the 2021 growing season kicks off, Anderson said the main challenge for him is getting the customers product they already purchased and badly need. As for the shipping situation, he said there is word that it could start improving by mid-summer. In a possible preview of what’s to come, Anderson said high-end alfalfa coming out of the Southwest region is coming in at stronger demand than last year. Although that could play out as positive news for Kittitas Valley producers, he said it is far too early to tell. “It’s not a demand issue, it’s a shipping issue,” he said. “When you start talking about a new crop market, you’re not talking about a new crop market right now. You’re just struggling to get last year’s crop shipped out. I think it’s going to take some time to develop a new crop market on timothy for sure as we go into summer.” n