Farmers celebrate harvest season not being derailed by strike

CHATTANOOGA (WDEF) The rail strike has been averted. This is not just a win for rail workers, but for farmers as well.

Farmers sat on pins and needles as rail workers touted a strike this Friday. Thankfully, a tentative deal between the major railroads and unions has been announced.

A strike would have deadlocked the commodity supply chains at the start of harvest season.

Charley Martinez is an Assistant Professor in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at University of Tennessee and the Director of the UT Center of Farm Management. He said there is sigh of relief amongst producers.

“For us, and the producers around here in the southeast, it’s a sigh of relief, for sure. You know, this is a victory, especially thinking about the profits that our producers were going to lose because of this,” said Martinez.

Farmers already had grounds for concern as railways stopped carrying critical chemicals earlier this week in anticipation.

“A key component to fertilizers is ammonia, and as we start thinking about harvest season and we start preparing for winter, prepping the ground for winter. Ammonia is a key component for fertilizer and people had already started to stop moving ammonia, just because it can be explosive and then if there was a chance for it to be stranded somewhere they wanted to avoid that. So, railroad companies had already stopped moving ammonia. So being able to now get back to that point where they’re actually moving it again is going to be critical, especially this time of year,” Martinez said.

Crops left in the field due to lack of grain space could have cost some millions of dollars.

“If there was no room to put crops in the bin, they were going to sit out there. That’s going to be massive loss of revenue there for the producer, especially if rain was to hit at a bad time then we’re thinking about Alpha toxin,” said Martinez. “You’re talking about a massive loss, millions of dollars. We would have seen that relatively quick, because we are in the rolling stages of harvest season right now.”

The agreement provides rail employees a 24 percent wage increase, while also paying out an immediate $11,000 upon adoption.