Source: The Seattle Times | April 15, 2024 | Opinion | by Pam Lewison
The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released data from the U.S. Census of Agriculture and the numbers are shocking.
Between 2017 and 2022, our state lost 3,717 farms and ranches. It also lost more than 102,000 food-producing acres. To put these numbers in perspective, Washington lost a total of 3,456 farms in the previous decade.
We all know that correlation does not equal causation. Yet increases in operating costs and the enactment of hostile state and federal agricultural policy certainly suggest causation.
For example, 2022 was the first year agricultural overtime pay was implemented in Washington state.
In just a year’s time, agricultural employers saw their labor costs increase nearly 10% per employee by adding just five hours of overtime pay a week. An increase of $107.73 per employee, applied to the 164,000 farmworkers in our state, represents an increase of $17.67 million in overtime wages a week industrywide.
Farms and ranches are often misunderstood in discussions about labor, with the prevailing belief being that increased costs can simply be passed on to the consumer. However, farms and ranches negotiate set prices often before their operating prices are incurred. The overtime law also reinforced the mistaken but persistent belief that farms and ranches are rife with poor treatment of people who work hard, often far from their homes and native languages.
Originally published in The Seattle Times, click here to read the full article.
Pam Lewison is a fourth-generation farmer in Eastern Washington and the director of the center for Agriculture at the Washington Policy Center.