In some ways, 2023 was a good one for agriculture in Washington.

The apple harvest was among the biggest in recent years.

Cherries, hops, grapes and asparagus had tough seasons, “but cattle prices were on the upward trend last year and that is continuing this year,” said Pam Lewison, agriculture research director for Washington Policy Center, an independent, nonprofit think tank.

Exports were down overall, in line with the national trend, but Washington’s agricultural commodities still found plenty of traction in foreign markets.

Frozen french fries and other frozen potato products, in particular, had a good year in 2023, shooting to the top of the exports list with $1.1 billion in value.

That was an 11.42% increase over 2022.

In general, “Washington state’s agricultural industry remains a vital part of our economy, culture and community,” wrote Derek Sandison, director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture, in this edition of Focus.

The state remains a leading producer of crops including apples, cherries, hops and wine grapes. The dairy, livestock and aquaculture sectors are also robust, he wrote.

Still, he pointed to challenges, from rising costs to a labor shortage.

Lewison, also a fourth-generation farmer, acknowledged challenges, too.

“There were a lot of things on the policy side of the coin that weren’t great," she said. "We had a lot of input costs that increased pretty significantly last year, and that increase in operating costs changed how a lot of people positioned themselves at the end of the year."

Farm input costs include resources farmers need to produce their crops or livestock. 

Challenges mount

Multiple factors have contributed to rising costs, Lewison said, including newly phased-in overtime rules for agricultural workers. The state Legislature in 2021 passed a law that mandated a 40-hour workweek for people in agriculture on a phased-in basis.

While it’s been hailed as a win for worker’s rights, it’s also been criticized for hurting farmers’ and workers’ pocketbooks and for not including exceptions during harvest. Follow-up legislation to add flexibility hasn’t been successful.

“The way it stands right now, Washington state has the most restrictive version of agricultural overtime in the United States,” Lewison said.

Other culprits behind rising costs range from increasing fuel prices to property taxes.

“Fertilizer is expensive, (so is) any chemical you have to buy, whether it is synthetic or organic. Then you also add into that property taxes and the general cost of living,” Lewison said. “Farms are a business. I think there’s this prevalent notion that farms don’t have operating expenses like regular businesses, but we do. We may have some exemptions, but there are exemptions enjoyed by other parts of the business community that we don’t have. There’s a give-and-take there.”

At the same time, a worker shortage persists.

Washington is a perennial top-five user of the federal H-2A program, which allows farmers and other agricultural employers who can’t find enough help to bring in foreign workers for temporary or seasonal labor. The employers must take steps to hire U.S. workers first.

Even so, an average of 30,000 foreign workers come to Washington every year through the program, demonstrating the depth of the agriculture labor shortage, Lewison said.

“That labor shortage, I suspect, will continue and potentially grow,” she said.

Alan Schreiber, executive director of the Washington Asparagus Commission and an asparagus farmer in Eltopia, described the 2023 season for his crop as a “bitter harvest.”

A late start, a glut of cheap imports from Peru and Mexico, and “terrible” prices all contributed. 

Labor costs also are an ongoing issue, he said. 

“Tying the minimum wage to inflation ... and the loss of the exemption from overtime” have been difficult to absorb, and, together, “could spell the end of the Washington asparagus industry,” he said.

This year's harvest is looking brighter, he said, noting it kicked off three weeks early. 

Census data

National census data shows a changing landscape for Washington agriculture.

The state had 32,076 farms and ranches in 2022, during the most recent census of agriculture. That’s a decrease of about 10% over a five-year period.

“It works out to two farms a day, every day for five years,” Lewison said.

The results of the 2022 agriculture census were released this past February. They showed an increase in the size of farms in the state – with the average farm at 432 acres, a bump of 5% over 2017 – but a drop in the number of overall acres of farmland in Washington.

Total acres in farmland was 13.9 million in 2022, down 6% from 2017.

The data also paints a picture of a graying agriculture industry, with the average age of Washington producers up 1.2 years to 59.3 years old.

While most Washington farms are family farms, Lewison said that children of farmers and farmworkers are increasingly turning away from the industry.

Some see the long hours logged by their parents; some would love to continue in the family business but clock the growing challenges ahead.

“There is going to continue to be a chronic and potentially growing shortage of farm labor because there is going to continue to be an exodus of people from agricultural communities locally, in part because they have no choice, and in part because some folks are just going to get priced out or policied out of doing the job,” Lewison said.

Yet there were bright spots in the census data:

• Farms and ranches in the state produced $12.8 billion in agricultural products, a $3.17 billion increase over the previous census.
• Average farm income increased to $75,079, and 34% of farms in the state had positive net cash farm income.
• A total of 3,564 farms in the state sold directly to consumers, and the value of those sales – totaling $98.7 million – grew 44% from the previous census.
• More farms had internet access and used renewable energy producing systems.
• The number of beginning farmers grew 1%.
• Forty-two percent of all Washington producers were female, and 71% of farms in the state had at least one female decision maker.

Path forward

Lewison said the path forward involves figuring out a way “to have a better relationship with our food producers...We need to figure out how to better communicate with each other on a producer-consumer level so the future can be better and brighter for both sides.”

Without local producers and farmworkers, there’s no local food, and consumers have consistently said they want ethically sourced, responsibly grown food with minimal environmental impact, she said. “The best way to get that and lean into that, is to get it from someone who farms in the state where you live,” Lewison said.

Two-way dialogue will be critical, she said.

Lewison was hopeful about the Washington State Agriculture Viability Conference held in Kennewick at the end of May facilitating that kind of dialogue, and for longer discussions in the coming Legislative sessions about the benefits farms bring to the table.

She’s optimistic about agriculture in Washington.

“Agriculture is cyclical,” she said. Things may be challenging now, but they’ll turn around.

“I always tell people that farmers are ultimately the odd dichotomy of being realistic optimists because they see what’s right in front of them but hope for what could be. You have to be,” Lewison said. “You can’t plant a seed in the dirt and hope it will come up and not be that way.” 

And the agriculture industry is at the heart of Washington, its core.

“When you sit down with someone and you share a meal with them, particularly a meal sourced from close to them, it teaches you about the place and the person in a way that nothing else can. If we don’t support our local food systems, then in turn, we are allowing a part of who we are as Washingtonians to effectively pass away,” Lewison said. “Whether it’s a piping hot apple pie, or the simplicity of boiled potatoes with butter and salt, or a steak from the grill, or something else – if we aren’t supporting things that are specific to our local food system, we are forgetting who we are, and I hope we don’t do that.”