Last month, Washington Association of Wheat Growers (WAWG) Past President Andy Juris joined a roomful of agricultural stakeholders to examine how the regulatory burden affects Washington state farms.
Juris participated on a panel at the 2024 Washington State Agricultural Viability Conference in Kennewick, Wash. The Washington State Department of Agriculture and Washington State University’s College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences hosted the conference, which was designed to bring together the state’s farmers, ranchers, and agricultural businesses to discuss some of the challenges growers face within the agricultural industry, highlight successes, and discuss opportunities to invest in the future of agriculture.
Joining Juris on the panel were Matthew Cox, owner of Green Bow Farm; Maggie Elliot, science and communications director for the Washington Hop Commission; and Karen Sheehan, owner of J&K Dairy. The panel was moderated by Jon Wyss, state executive director for the Farm Service Agency. Wyss opened the panel by telling the audience that farmers are the best environmentalists because they make their living from the land.
“Agriculture is the lifeblood of any economy. The farmers and producers who are in this room and on this panel and their associated members care for the 18 to 24 inches below the ground where everything starts: food, fiber, production, land, water. They take care of it and have been given the instruction to take care of it for future generations,” Wyss said.
Wyss asked the panelists to introduce themselves and talk about some of the challenges they face.
Matthew Cox. Green Bow Farm in Ellensburg sells meat and eggs directly to consumers through farmers markets, on-farm sales, and online. Cox said new labor laws are one of their biggest hurdles. “We need to produce to have a product to make money, and a lot of those regulations are biting into our ability to produce,” he explained. The increasing cost of labor, higher wages, and paid worker time off are impacting his bottom line.
Andy Juris. Juris, a wheat farmer from Bickleton, said the biggest issue he sees on the horizon is Washington state’s transportation system. Shipping on the Columbia-Snake River System is a huge competitive advantage for his farm, which deals with low rainfall, shallow soils, and a short growing season. Juris is able to truck his wheat a short drive away to Roosevelt, Wash., where grain can be shipped downriver more cheaply than using other forms of transportation. He explained that any regulations that interfere with that shipping advantage could be devastating to wheat farmers.
“Ag is the bedrock of the U.S. economy. Just about every sector touches it. You’d be hard pressed to find a regulation or environment or industry where there is something going on that doesn’t affect all of us in this room,” he said.
The expired farm bill is another hurdle Juris’ farm faces. The farm bill uses data that is, on average, six years old, and costs have increased, especially inflation. Although the wheat industry isn’t as labor intensive as other agricultural sectors, wages and availability of workers is still a hurdle.
Maggie Elliot. Washington commands nearly a third of the world’s hop supply, and regulatory compliance in hops is a full-time job. Air and water quality, health and safety, and third-party certification are all challenges for the state’s hop growers, Elliot said. “We export hops to 60 countries, and each country has its own phytosanitary regulations. We need to be able to harmonize every ingredient we apply to our product with 60 different sets of regulations.” The Washington hop industry is also competing against countries that heavily subsidize their own hop growers.
Karen Sheehan. J&K Dairy in Sunnyside has more than 4,000 cows and young stock. They also grow about 2,000 acres of crops. Their largest costs of production are feed and water, labor, regulatory issues, and inflation. “If you don’t have water, you can’t grow crops, and you can’t treat manure,” she said. Sheehan wants to see continued success with the Yakima Basin Integrated Plan, which is a collaboration committed to addressing water, fishery, habitat, and climate variability challenges in the Yakima River Basin. She said the dairy collaborates with 15 other farmers to share water and is installing central pivots and doing soil monitoring to proactively address water use.
The state’s dairy industry has been dealing with labor and overtime rules longer than most. Besides a shrinking workforce, the labor pool looks very different from 10 to 20 years ago — skills are different and there are many more distractions, such as cell phones. J&K Dairy strives to be transparent to both state agencies and consumers. Sheehan acknowledged that being proactive to stay ahead of regulations costs more, and it’s an extra cost that other states don’t have.
“Every five years that bar gets raised, regardless of the science,” she said. “All regulations have a cost for us in dairy. The threat of 3rd party lawsuits always haunts us. We control what we can control. We’ve worked hard to build relationships with our neighbors, other farmers, state agencies, stakeholders, etc. We’ve opened the farm up for tours. We tell our story. If we don’t tell our story, somebody else is going to. Telling our story, involves stories of sustainability and making sure people understand we are taking care of the land.”
Part of the panel included the audience participating in a survey on what they saw as some of the biggest hurdles in Washington’s ag industry. Regulatory challenges, labor costs, high input costs, water scarcity, economic resilience, labor availability, and the rural-urban divide were at the top of the list.
