Everyone eats.
All farms play a critical role in our food security, whether they export across the globe or supply local schools and hospitals or provide the food that arrives on your fork. Community gardens and farmers markets are great ways for urban and suburban consumers to get involved with food production and meet the people behind the product while supporting local.
Secure our food supply.
Securing our future food supply has never been more important than it is today. As you prepare to vote, we urge you consider your candidate’s stance on ensuring our farmers can continue to afford to provide affordable food, fuel and fiber to our fellow citizens. A pandemic and visibly empty shelves highlight the need to talk about our most basic needs and making sure they can be met here locally.
Food related stances.
When reviewing candidates’ food-related stances and platforms, it’s necessary to understand the many components of local farms that affect people/labor force, land/environment, water, plants and the overall small business that is the family farm.
A candidate should consider:
Labor
Washington State has one of the highest wage rates in the nation. Farmers absolutely cannot get food to shelves without consistent, skilled workers supporting them. Increasing labor costs result in fewer workers hired, thus fewer families supported. If a candidate advocates for increased labor costs, they are not a friend to farmers, ranchers, or the workers’ families they support. Farmers understand the value of hard work. Farmers believe this work should be compensated with a living wage. But farmers need to stop being dismissed when they plea for the kind of economic balance that allows them to provide living wages to their workers.
Small business
96% of farms in Washington State are family owned. A candidate that supports small business supports family farms into the future.
Land management and development
How does the candidate feel about Right to Farm laws and the Growth Management Act? Do they agree with losing farms to urban sprawl?
Water use and access
Does the candidate believe water is a renewable resource?
Business and operations, payroll, property, and other taxes
Does the candidate agree with current agricultural tax exemptions?
Fuel use and carbon footprints
Farmers and ranchers are actively doing the hard work of conservation on a daily basis, effectively saving us from some of our worst consumer habits. We need to support them, and our decision-makers in both society and government could do a better job directing resources to help them. How would the candidate credit farmers for carbon sequestration, wetland management, and invasive species control?
“We need fair policies about our maintenance costs, permits, fees and taxes. Without fair policies that directly impact agricultural operational costs, farmers can not afford the laborers that are needed to keep a farm operational. Much financial burden is placed on farmers through multiple - often unnecessary and overreaching - government policies, written by people who do not farm or understand the many ways a farm can operate. Farmers want to hire more labor and pay living wages to their laborers, but are under the duress of political burden. We are being asked to produce these wages from thin air. We need more autonomy in our operational practices so that we can afford to pay our workers a wage that gives them autonomy of lifestyle.”
If candidates don’t have answers to those questions readily available, now is the time to press for them. Food and food security is of the utmost importance in communities where farming is less visible. When you cannot look outside the window and see a vast expanse of field with a tractor in it, a conversation about the preservation of those places should matter most. By investing in where your food comes from, you are investing in your family, your future, and your community.
Please follow your elected official’s support of policy connected to your dinner plate. If you are concerned, speak up!
Support your local family farm.
Family farms are crucial to the quality of life we live in the PNW. The farms that steward the land and harvest our food, allow us to break bread together and build community.
Breaking bread together.
By purchasing products that are grown and harvested nearby, you're supporting local agriculture and local farms. Family farms steward the land and harvest our food, allowing us to break bread together and build community.
“Food on your plate is like money in your pocket.”
— Julius Caesar Robinson