The Stories Project: Oregon Livelihoods Traded Away

Mark Wettstein Residence: Ontario, OR Age: 58 Occupation: Grower: sugar beets, potatoes, other Affiliations: Nyssa-Nampa Sugar Beet Growers Association, Oregon Farm Bureau member

Snapshots "In sugar, we can raise sugar beets as cheap as anywhere in the world but the problem is that you're not working with a level playing field. When you've got some 8-9 year old kid who can go out and harvest that crop with a machete all day long and get paid $2 a day, that's pretty hard to compete against that kind of wages and they don't have the medical, they don't have to worry about insurance, they don't have the minimum wage." "A lot of us in this area who used to raise a lot of potatoes feel like the NAFTA agreement basically ruined that crop here locally because all the Canadian potatoes that were allowed to come in. JR Simplot just closed the Hermiston plant and I think they moved it up to Canada." "I don't know why any politician or our president would want to ruin out that crop. That's what would happen to sugar with CAFTA. They claim it would just be a small amount of sugar. Maybe to them it is small, but with all the sugar that's coming in with what we produce from sugar cane and beet markets, CAFTA sugar imports would break us." "" "" "For a living, I do row crop and few cattle on the side. We have alfalfa, wheat, corn (some is shell corn and some is silage corn). We raise about 150 acres of onions and 350 acres of sugar beets. " "We've been raising sugar beets since 1946. In our incorporation here, it started out as a family operation. At one time, I had four brothers and brother-in-law in the operation. Two have passed away. One we bought out. And a brother-in-law, we bought him out and he went to teaching school a couple of years ago. So my operation there's only my brother Louis who is a County Commissioner and myself. " "The USDA Sugar Beet Allotment System: We're talking about the federal allotment for sugar beets. The way I understand it is that the Unites States Department of Agriculture, they look at how much sugar is stock piled. Really what they are trying to do is maintain a level of sugar that is slightly above what is being consumed because you don't want to have a whole bunch stock piled. If they see that the consumption is down or the stockpiles are there, the come back to us as the company and say this how much sugar we want this company to produce this year. Therefore the company will then come to us as growers and say well we're going to need to produce a little less sugar so we're going to cut you 10 acres or 15 acres from last year or whatever it might be. " "If it looks like it's going to be an even-steven thing, you'll end up growing about the same. If it looks a little under then they would actually allow you to possible grow a little bit more. That has basically never really happened. " "Sugar Imports and Cutbacks in the USDA Sugar Allotment: In a real simple manner, that's how that allotment situation comes down to us from the USDA. But you've got so many other factors that come into play because you've got the World Trade Organizations (WTO) that says you've got to allow 1,000,000 ton of sugar into the US market and then you have NAFTA on top of that which allows sugar to come in from Mexico and these all play on what we're allowed to produce. That all helps determine our allotment. Basically, what has happened to us is that since 1996 we were getting $12 more per ton of sugar beets then we are getting right now. In other words, in 2004 we've lost $12/ton. In this area it's fairly easy to get 30 tons of beets. There's people who'll get 35, some even 40, but if you were just going on a 30 ton average, if you were losing $12 per ton, that would amount to $360/acre and if you're growing 350 acres of sugar beets, you compute that out and it's almost $100,000 which we're losing and this has all been a result because we've had to grow less acres and we got paid less for them." "If we didn't have all of this foreign sugar coming into our markets, you would have less supply and therefore we could get more for our refined sugar. In our particular situation here, we have a company that the growers bought. They're in a unique situation in that they are trying to reduce their debt load. Once that's paid for, that will reduce the pressure on us growers. And then we could probably see a little bit more of an increase in our price, but if this sugar beet industry goes down the tubes, then we've lost the company, we've lost our investment to pay for the shares and it will be devastated to those who have been invested in that crop." "Investment in Machinery: If the sugar industry goes down the tubes, we've lost our investment to buy the industry, we've lost our investment the company, the machinery we have (a 12 row planter we can also use to plant corn, and we can use that 12 row cultivator for corn) but outside of that use lose the investment in your harvester and your beater. A New harvester is somewhere around $50,000 dollars. When we replace a harvester its almost always with new ones. Our beater we can keep changing bearings and flales and keep it up that way. But generally on a harvester you can only run them so many years and then they're wore out. We've always replaced them with a new machine. " "So you lose the industry, there's a lot you lose. With our land you can always go to other crops: grain or hay, but when you've made that investment and then it's gone, well it's just like losing $200,000-$300,000 in the stock market. You've invested that money and the market goes South, you kiss that investment off. It's no longer there." "CAFTA: Well for sugar, CAFTA is an issue because it would just be another nail in the coffin. More sugar would be brought in on top of us, another pressure point on sore spot. We're just basically going along right now making a little profit if you have a good yield. From everything I've read, from everything I've heard from people in the sugar industry, we can't take the additional imports of CAFTA. The US is already the largest net importer of sugar. So it's not like we're not allowing sugar in. " "I don't know why any politician or our president would want to ruin out that crop. That's what would happen to sugar with CAFTA. They claim it would just be a small amount of sugar. Maybe to them it is small, but with all the sugar that's coming in with what we produce from sugar cane and beet markets, CAFTA sugar imports would break us." "There are 5 major sugar companies in the US. There is no way that all of them could survive. There would be at least two of them that would go down. Whenever that goes out, that would relieve the pressure a little bit and those who are still the business could pick up the slack, but we've already had four companies quit within the last six months. Six sugar plants have quit because it just wasn't economical. Nyssa, OR was one of them, one in Michigan, one in Louisiana, and I believe the last one was in Florida I think." "In sugar, we can raise sugar beets as cheap as anywhere in the world but the problem is that you're not working with a level playing field. When you've got some 8-9 year old kid who can go out and harvest that crop with a machete all day long and get paid $2 a day, that's pretty hard to compete against that kind of wages and they don't have the medical, they don't have to worry about insurance, they don't have the minimum wage. There are a lot of factors that come into play. If we could compete with other countries on a level playing field, we could raise sugar as cheap as anybody just because of our efficiency. We're worried about having South American sugar come in because of how they process it." "Potatoes and NAFTA: When you asked me what crops you raise, if you had asked me two years ago, I would have told you potatoes. We quit raising potatoes two years ago because it just wasn't economical to raise potatoes anymore. The processors here locally want them "sprinkled." It's a fairly high labor crop because you have get a lot of help to get the clods out when you harvest and you have to lay the pipe out and pick it back up. It's quite labor extensive. We finally found that in our contracts it wasn't economical to grow potatoes anymore. " "But one of the problems was that the processors wanted to pay less money because they could get them out of Canada for cheaper. A lot of us in this area who used to raise a lot of potatoes feel like the NAFTA agreement basically ruined that crop here locally because all the Canadian potatoes that were allowed to come in. JR Simplot just closed the Hermiston plant and I think they moved it up to Canada. " "NAFTA and Beef: And another thing, since they've cut the Canadian beef off, the cattlemen now are finally seeing a profit in that. It's too bad you have spend your whole life raising a particular crop or particular item like cattle and know that for every two steps forward there's half a step back. What happens is your gradually lose enough ground to where you have to sell out and you just sell the ranch or farm or you go belly up. That has happened to a lot of ranchers over the years. Now ranchers are enjoying a lot of income because they haven't had the beef coming in from Canada. That won't last forever. Like when you have an export market in beef to Japan and they cut us off, that affects the market the same way." "Impacts of plant closure in Nyssa: Jobs to replace sugar plant jobs -- there's a bio refinery that they're working on. All the hurdles have gone through to get that built. It that goes in there will be some jobs there, but that particular facility is only supposed to employ 65 people. When you have 450 people who lost jobs in Nyssa, that's just a drop in the bucket. " "There's no way that the farms or the processing plants can pick that slack up. I personally can't see how a lot of those people can stay in this area. A lot of those people were just seasonal anyways. The sugar beet campaign only lasted 3 months, but apparently with husband and wife working the campaign and picking up jobs on the side, they could make it by." "Member of any groups, organizations, community groups: I am a member of the Oregon Farm Bureau. I get their newsletters so I see what they are doing. The Nyssa sugar beet growers association. I'm on the potato growers association, but I was nominated to be on that board the year we decided to stop growing potatoes. I was just recently put on the Nyssa-Nampa sugar beet growers association." "Talking to Politicians about the Impacts of Free Trade: I went back to Washington DC in the first part of February with some other Nyssa-Nampa growers and met with several Congressmen and Senators from the state of Oregon and Idaho. We went back there to tell them our story and let them know what CAFTA would do if it were passed. " "Our response was very good. In Oregon we met with congressman Defazio, Congresswoman Hooley, and Congressman Walden. All of them except for Walden we met with their aids. We did meet with Greg Walden. I think he was leaning towards CAFTA a year ago and then after he has seen the closure of this plant and what would happen. He sees that it wasn't economical to continue putting beets through this plant so they are being shifted to Nampa where they will be processed. But he could see how much money is being taken out of that community and how many people were being displaced from that plant closure that if we lose that industry it goes into the producers, truckers, people who work in harvesting that crop and so forth. So it's not just growers either. So I think he's beginning to realize that it wouldn't be a good agreement for us. " "Final Comments: I've raised sugar beets all my life but sugar is a complex crop. Over the years there's been the sugar programs which I haven't understood the best. But I know right now with the amount of sugar that's allowed to come into this country along with the sugar we produce we're stockpiling more sugar than we can consume. So the allotment you asked about, they've come back and asked us to grow less acres so that we have less sugar to be dealing with. We're not in favor of being subsidized. It's supposed to be a program that carries its own and we'd like to operate in that fashion. We feel that if there is just whatever they consider a small amount of sugar from these Central American countries that will come in our markets then all of those who have studied it say that it will ruin the sugar industry. If it doesn't ruin it completely, it will take out two major companies and maybe eventually we may end up with just one sugar company in the United States." "I'm not sure what else I can add. If you look at the price of sugar that the grower has received in proportion to the price of sugar that they get in the stores or that the candy makers or the bakeries make, their margin has gone up 20% and our margin has gone down 20%. So it's really lop-sided. As sugar gets cheaper, we as growers get paid less, but you don't any less for it, but as Congressman Wu was saying, the price of candy, pastries, and doughnuts only go up. " "We would like to be able to get in a position to where raising sugar beets is a profitable crop. We feel like we can survive and our company can survive but we can't survive if CAFTA is passed and that amount of sugar that's in that agreement is allowed to come into this country. "

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