About a month ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced a revision in how it was calculating the “farmer’s share” of the food dollar.
The results were bleak.
The USDA noted instead of the usual 14 cents, our food producers are pocketing 11.8 cents of every dollar spent in grocery stores. The remaining 88.2 cents pay for everything that happens to food after it leaves a farm or ranch, also known as the “marketing share.”
On its own, the number does not tell much of a story. It is difficult to define profitability based on grocery dollars spent or determine how food producers are faring with a single data point. Washington state is one of those states where context is critical to paint the overall picture.
A recent op-ed outlining the failures of our legislature to take meaningful steps to improve the climate for agriculture hit the target dead-center. “At the precise moment agriculture needed a lifeline, Olympia behaved as though 2026 was just another year for ideological theater. … The worst bills died, but so did any serious effort to address the actual crisis,” wrote Ben Tindall, executive director of Save Family Farming.
For years, the legislature has been warned our agricultural community was reaching a tipping point. Data from earlier this year confirms the truth of those warnings, noting Washington’s farms and ranches are 50th in the country in earned income despite remaining among the most crop-diverse and advantaged in shipping ports in the United States. More concerning is the speed with which that decline occurred. In 2021, our food producers earned $2.8 billion, by the announcement of the 2024 data, that income had fallen by $3.19 billion, into a deficit.
Activists and casual observers are quick to judge, saying, “You get what you voted for,” or passing the blame to federal policy. However, if that were the case, the precipitous decline in agricultural fortunes would be seen across the whole U.S. equally.
Olympia is fond of comparing our agricultural sector to California. The same data set showing Washington state at the bottom of the pile, shows California finishing first in earned income, with $19 billion in 2024 and uneven, but upward, trajectory between 2021 and 2024. So, if federal policy or voting for Republicans is to blame, why didn’t California’s agricultural sector suffer a significant decline, too?
Because local policy decisions matter.
The data show the policy decisions in Olympia have been detrimental to Washington state’s food producers. The data illuminates how detrimental policies like ever-escalating Labor & Industries costs, overtime policies, and fuel taxes, have been to our food producers.
Now, before the next legislative session, is the time to find ways to ameliorate the harm from those policies. Legislators can improve the agricultural climate for the better.
But they have to choose to make good policy decisions.
Washington state is one of a handful of states that maintains a monopoly on the issuance of employee insurance. If the state were to open the marketplace to private insurers, rates would decrease through competition and give employers the option to right-size insurance coverage for their businesses.
Our state holds the dubious honor of having the strictest agricultural overtime law in the U.S. With time-and-a-half required after 40 hours worked, no seasonal exemptions or flexibility, and no tax incentives for agricultural employers, and some of the highest agricultural wages in the country, Washington state’s labor laws are pricing food producers out of business.
Since the implementation of the overtime law, farm advocates have been petitioning the legislature for seasonal adjustments to the law to no avail. Recent data from the Washington State Tree Fruit Association noted their growers paid 108 percent of gross income to labor costs alone, leaving less than zero income to cover the other costs of their operations in 2025. An upside-down income structure from our state’s signature crop growers is an indication of the potential for collapse of the larger industry, if significant legislative changes are not made to our labor policy immediately.
The Climate Commitment Act continues to assess a fuel tax on our food producers. Under the CCA, food producers are exempt from paying the tax assessed for carbon offsets. However, no real-world mechanism was outlined to truly exempt ag fuel users from the tax. Despite the best efforts of lawmakers like Rep. Tom Dent, there is still a significant portion of the agricultural community paying into the CCA coffers. Whether lawmakers establish a receipt remittance and rebate plan or some other tax relief for ag users, something can and should be done this interim.
Many have questioned the earnestness of the agricultural community to participate in solutions-oriented activities during recent years. Each of these solutions have been suggested and rebuffed on multiple occasions. Farmers and ranchers have turned away from participation in favor of working toward survival. Or relocation.
If Washington state wants to remain the Apple State, now is the time to take these solution suggestions seriously and work toward implementing them. Data in context tell the whole story. Now is the time to see the picture that has been painted and make a new one.
