The Capital Press is a weekly newspaper that covers agriculture in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California. It is worth the price to be able to stay up to date on what is going on not only in Washington but in our neighboring states as well.
We have differences between the states due to topography, climate, soil types, etc. We have similarities when it comes to things like labor, input costs, water, being price-takers and the political atmosphere.
Sometimes, in Washington, we get a little warning of what other states are doing that may be coming our way. It seems Washington is becoming a “let’s copy California” state. People are fleeing California and moving here — why do we want to copy what they are doing?
I just read through the paper that came today. It is a quicker process than it used to be as it is much smaller than when I originally started subscribing years ago. Like with everything else, people are using the internet more, and the print-on-paper world is shrinking. I still like to hold something in my hands and be able to turn the pages, flip back and forth. I am not into reading off of a glaring screen. I know that dates me as an old-fashioned dinosaur, but that is just who I am.
Anyway, back to today’s paper.
The front page main article was “The Big Switch — Electrifying all U.S. vehicles would be a colossal feat.” One statistic jumped out at me. According to the American Transportation Research Institute, it will take 7.1 million tons (14 billion, 200 million pounds) of lithium, cobalt, graphite and nickel to put batteries in our trucking fleet just one time. That’s a serious amount of mining to be done elsewhere in the world, under what we are told are horrific conditions, in order to put batteries, only one time, in just the trucks that haul products all across our nation.
Is there that much out there? Those are finite resources. How long will it take to mine it and produce all those batteries? And what happens to them when they no longer function? But I am going to jump ship on this one for now — I am not knowledgeable enough to cover that topic so I will leave it to others.
I really want to address the topic of another article that was also on the front page. Tom Vilsack is the secretary of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The USDA is just now releasing the results of the 2022 Census of Agriculture. He was quoted from a press conference as saying, “Because I’m concerned about the state of agriculture and food production in this country.”
He said the survey was a wakeup call. REALLY? Seriously? He is just now figuring it out?
Those of us in agriculture have been trying to get the message out there for years, and he is just now figuring it out? The census is done every five years. From 2017 to 2022, the U.S. lost 142,000 farms and 20 million acres of farmland. Those are family farms that we are losing. They are being swallowed up by larger operations or being covered by houses, windmill farms and solar panels.
The bottom line — we have fewer farmers and less land on which to produce food. The USA needs to understand the plight of our food production industry. Family farms are disappearing and with them so are small, rural communities. When a family farm dies, the employees move away, the town loses businesses, and schools close because there just are not enough people left to keep the community alive.
According to Secretary Vilsack, the reality of today’s farm families is that for every dollar you spend on groceries, the farmer gets 15 cents, and by the time they pay their production costs, they maybe make 7 cents. I recently heard from a Farm Bureau friend whose family just made the hard decision to shut down their organic orchard near Wenatchee. They sold 900 pounds of Gala apples for $78 — about 8 to 9 cents per pound — which did not even cover the cost of labor to pick the apples, let alone all the other expenses for the year.
I guess Secretary Vilsack’s statistics are not 100% accurate.
They cannot survive on that. They cannot feed and clothe their own family. Most American farmers have at least one member of the family working off the farm to provide the income they live on just so they can continue farming.
American farm families need the support of every consumer. We are less than 2% of the population. We need everyone to communicate with state legislators and federal congressional members to tell them that agriculture is the backbone of America. We all need agriculture to feed us. We need policies that help, not hinder, the innovative, hard-working farmers and ranchers who are producing more and more food on less and less land.
We are nearing the breaking point.
It is time to stand and acknowledge the importance of agriculture. It is time to send the message that we appreciate the significant investment people have made in their farms and ranches and that we appreciate and need them. I would like to ask you to take 24 minutes to watch a documentary that was just released this past week about Jeff and Diana Bedlington of Lynden in Whatcom County at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N1TaIa4wwY.
The USDA publishes the national statistics from the census, then works their way down to state statistics and then to individual counties. I will do an article on Lewis County as soon as I am able to get the statistics. My ask: shop local if you can, but please at least seek out American products. If you want to become “a friend of farmers,” you can join Farm Bureau as an associate member and add your voice to ours in speaking on behalf of agriculture in Washington and in Lewis County.
Give me a holler. I am president and also membership chair for Lewis County Farm Bureau.
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Maureen Harkcom is president of the Lewis County Farm Bureau. She can be reached at maureen.harkcom@gmail.com.
