10-02-2024 11:50am

LOCAL FARMERS FEAR

Hunt Valley Life Staff

Port shutdown could cripple international trade

above photo: Lippy Farms, Hampstead

Ag groups ask feds to intervene in the dispute between the International Longshoremen’s Association and the United States Maritime Alliance.

By Joshua Baethge & Chris Torres, farmprogress.com

Art Wager/Getty Images

A dispute between dockworkers and shippers could shut down 36 ports across the U.S eastern and gulf coasts. Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association are set to go on strike Oct. 1 if they fail to reach an agreement with the United States Maritime Alliance (UXMX), which represents major shipping lines. ILA members want better pay and assurances that their jobs won’t be replaced by automated equipment.

“USMX knows what our bottom line with wages needs to be for our ILA rank-and-file to ratify a new Master Contract Agreement,” ILA’s International President and Chief Negotiator Harold J. Daggett said in a Sept. 23 statement. “They call me several times each week trying to get the ILA to accept a low-ball wage package. My ILA members are not going to accept these insulting offers that are a joke considering the work my ILA longshore workers perform, and the billion dollar profits the companies make off the backs of their labor.”

If longshoremen follow through with their threats, it would be the first strike on the east and gulf coasts since 1977. According to a J.P. Morgan analysis, the strike could cost the U.S. economy around $5 billion per day. That’s approximately 6% of the nation’s daily gross domestic product.

The affected ports handle roughly half of the United States’ ocean trade. They include some of the agriculture industry’s most important export points.

East and Gulf Coast ports ship around two-thirds of all poultry meat exports. The Port of Baltimore is the largest U.S. port by volume for farm and construction machinery. It handled a record number of roll-on, roll-off vehicles in 2023, including tractors, combines, balers and more.

Norfolk’s port exported 1.6 million metric tons of soybeans in containers last year, the most in the country, according to the Soy Transportation Coalition in Ankeny, Iowa.

Baltimore and ports in New York/New Jersey are also major hubs for soybean containers, which go to specialty customers or countries that want smaller shipments. The vast majority of exported soybeans from the U.S. are shipped in bulk out of the Mississippi Gulf region, which shipped 27 million metric tons last year.

The Ports of New York, Philadelphia and Houston are major hubs for agriculture imports. According to an American Farm Bureau Federation analysis, 73% of all waterborne containerized agriculture imports flow through ports threatened by the strike.

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