Wyden holds roundtable with Morrow County ag leaders, processors
Published 4:00 pm Friday, August 4, 2023
- U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, center, held a roundtable session Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023, at the Boardman SAGE Center on to speak with Morrow County agriculture leaders and processors. As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Wyden was seeking ways he could help to continue generating jobs in Eastern Oregon and growing export markets.
BOARDMAN — U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden met Thursday, Aug. 3, with Eastern Oregon agriculture leaders and processors at the SAGE Center to discuss ways he could help continue to generate regional jobs and grow their export markets overseas.
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Wyden is chair of the Senate Finance Committee.
“Oregon does many things well,” he said, “especially by growing things, and you can see that here in Eastern Oregon. We have growers, chippers and processors, and they really want the government to focus on the kinds of policies that are going to make things more productive.”
Affordable housing, immigration and worldwide tariffs also were topics of discussion
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at the session.
Boardman Chamber of Commerce Director Torrie Griggs brought up housing, stating that roughly 67% of the city’s workforce comes from other areas because they either can’t afford or don’t have residences in Boardman. She said the average cost of a home within city limits was around $350,000.
Wyden responded by mentioning his March reintroduction of the Decent, Affordable, Safe Housing for All Act, which aims to help low- and middle-income families face the housing affordability crisis.
Patrick Maag, director of continuous improvement and maintenance with Boardman Foods Inc., mentioned how much of the industry runs with the assistance of immigrants.
“The labor that supports all of the things that come into our factories and grocery stores (is) largely run on the backs of immigrants,” he said.
“How do we allow those people to, maybe, earn a spot to stay in this country, if that’s what they want to do? That sector of the labor force is also super critical to everybody here.”
Brian Jackson, Lamb Weston plant manager, brought up tariffs when trading worldwide.
“As we grow internationally, as we grow our operations here locally, a lot of our products ship internationally,” he said. “When we look at tariffs worldwide, we have competitors in Europe that can ship products to South Korea or Vietnam much cheaper than we can here locally, so we look at our strategic plan, those are things that we would like to be able to do.”
“We have to have a trade policy that is much more flexible, and tariffs are not the only solution,” Wyden replied. “Tariffs are too inflexible to meet the needs of modern exports.”
The Democrat was on a swing though Eastern Oregon, having made stops Aug. 1 in Baker City.
He said the trip wasn’t just about hearing from constituents but also about building a report detailing issues facing rural Oregon food production and agriculture, then presenting it to the Senate Finance Committee and for Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek.