Kate Riley / Times staff columnist
State's asparagus industry cut adrift in the Andes

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On a recent stop by The Seattle Times with a group of Latin American journalists and business people studying globalization, Rivero was blunt about at least one failure of the Andean Trade Preference Act, which seeks to provide incentives to lure growers of coca leaf into growing alternate crops. The incentives have been successful in expanding Peruvian asparagus exports at a severe cost to the U.S. asparagus industry, and Rivero said coca cultivation remains strong.

"The United States is being fooled," Rivero said through a State Department interpreter. "The asparagus is grown 1,000 miles from the coca-growing areas in the mountains. They couldn't possibly grow asparagus there.

"One office told us the thought was that people would move to grow asparagus," Rivero said with exasperation that needed no interpretation. "Would someone move from Buffalo (N.Y.) to Seattle to grow asparagus?"

A General Accounting Office report to Congress three years ago essentially concurs with Rivero's assertion: U.S. subsidies of Peruvian asparagus have not thwarted coca leaf cultivation.

But they are killing a once-vital American asparagus industry centered in Washington, California and Michigan, where growers struggle to compete with $5-per-day Peruvian workers.

In 1990, asparagus was cultivated on about 30,000 acres in Washington. In 2003, state statistics listed 15,000 acres, and industry officials say another 1,700 have been plowed under since Del Monte Foods announced in July it was moving its Toppenish asparagus line to ... Peru, where it can export back to the United States tariff free. The tiny Yakima County town lost 350 jobs.

I called Alan Schreiber, executive director of the Washington Asparagus Commission, for his "I told you so." Two years ago, he cited the federal Andean trade act along with the state's escalating minimum wage, the highest in the nation, as the things that would kill the 100-year-old Washington asparagus industry.

Since then, the industry lost the federal battle when the 1991 act was renewed and failed to get an exemption from the state minimum wage. Nevertheless, the budget-strapped state Legislature this year scratched out about $3.5 million to help the labor-intensive industry mechanize processing and packing plants and about another $330,000 for Washington State University research on a mechanical harvester. Not counting payroll and economic benefits to rural communities, Washington asparagus, processed and fresh-packed, is worth about $100 million a year.

Also, the United Farm Workers, often at odds with growers, pitched in, lobbying on behalf of the industry. They asked the Legislature to pass a joint memorial urging Congress to exempt asparagus from the Andean trade act.

I'm skeptical a mechanical harvester can replace skilled workers. When I had a 14-years-younger back, I spent a day cutting asparagus in a Pasco field for a story — a memory that gives me twinges. The stoop labor requires deft hands and shrewd eyes to discern mature spears from those that need more growing. Faulty judgment and slow work affects your pay.

But automation might be the industry's only hope. At least there would be some jobs left.

Del Monte is gone, and a canned processing line in Walla Walla was shut down, also. But, for now, Washington is still home to the world's largest asparagus buyer and processor under the Green Giant label. The Dayton Chamber of Commerce lists Seneca Foods' plant as its largest employer, with 1,150 seasonal employees and 50 year-round. Next is another seasonal company — Bluewood Ski Resort, with 160 seasonal jobs and nine year-round.

Locals say Seneca is to Columbia County what Boeing and Microsoft — combined — are to Puget Sound. Consider: In March, before asparagus harvest started, the county's jobs numbered only 1,180 and the jobless rate was 10 percent. When asparagus processing was in full swing last May, the total job count was 530 higher with the jobless rate down to 5.9 percent.

Although federal officials say Peru's economic stability from U.S. subsidies fits their goals, the shared frustration of Schreiber, the asparagus grower, and Rivero, the Peruvian journalist, is telling.

With enough shared frustration, maybe Congress might feel enough pressure to exempt asparagus from the Andean trade act — especially now that the Peruvian industry has demonstrated its competitive viability. It's the right thing to do.

If it doesn't, the Jolly Green Giant's canned asparagus line might soon be hailing from a new home town, leaving its old haunts in Dayton just that — haunts.

Kate Riley's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is kriley@seattletimes.com