Washington farmers face a “pretty challenging time,” Derek Sandison, director of the Washington Department of Agriculture, said.

“Across the board, all of our major industry sectors are seeing very high operating costs, commodity prices are flat, we’re seeing farm income down,” Sandison told the Capital Press.

A number of things have combined to cause the current situation, he said, including pest and disease pressures for various crops.

“In years past, we’ve had specific issues or a specific weather event that caused some problems, but overall, we had a pretty stable ag economy,” Sandison said. Now, “we’re looking at a whole bundle of things that we have to contend with.”

USDA reported that farm income in Washington dropped 42% from 2022 to 2023, he noted.

“We’re looking to find ways to make it a more favorable climate for agriculture,” Sandison said of WSDA. “We’re part of the solution, I think — or at least, I would hope to say.”

The department is working with Washington State University’s IMPACT Center economists to evaluate the viability of the state’s agriculture, and the factors contributing to high input costs and reductions in farm income, Sandison said.

WSDA and WSU will be sending questionnaires out to commissions and producers shortly.

“We want to document the reasons for that, the causes, so that when we go to the Legislature, to Congress, to USDA, we’re able to provide very factual information about what exactly is going on that’s affecting the bottom line,” he said. “… So we’re able to convey very clearly what needs to be done to improve the current environment for our farmers and ranchers.”

Labor costs

Tree fruit is the sector most affected, Sandison said.

“They’re certainly addressing that,” he said. “We can go through a long list of factors that contribute to the difficulties.”

Trade

“We’re in a period that we have not seen growth in our foreign markets,” Sandison said. “In fact, we’ve seen reductions in market share, particularly in India for our tree fruit. Wheat had a pretty difficult year last year with low prices, and part of that’s attributable to the lack of expanded trade opportunities.”

There have been two really good harvests for apples without much crop damage, but that meant a lot of apples to sell.

“When demand is relatively flat, that’s hard to do,” Sandison said.

Sandison also cited additional concerns about trade and tariffs.

“We’ve got significant tariff differentials as we deal with Vietnam, the Philippines (or) the Asian Rim,” Sandison said.

The U.S. continues to be at a competitive disadvantage with other countries as it is not part of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), he said.

President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the original Trans-Pacific Partnership in 2017.

Water availability

“Our ability to provide for additional irrigated acreage, in portions of our ag industry where there is a demand for more land, that’s a work in progress,” Sandison said, specifically pointing to potatoes.

Eastern Washington is unique in that it has the state Department of Ecology’s Office of the Columbia River, he said. The office works to meet current and future water needs in the Columbia River Basin, including those of communities, fish and farmers.

Sandison was director of that office for seven years before being appointed WSDA director in 2015.

Sandison pointed to 2006 legislation committing the state to helping expand water supplies to benefit communities, fish flows in streams and farms and ensure they have adequate supplies.

That includes the Odessa Subarea and the Yakima Basin Integrated Water Management Plan, he said.

“We haven’t met our goals with respect to water for farms, that’s something we need to continue to really press on,” he said of the Yakima plan. “We’ve done great things with respect to fish passage and land and water conservation, but we really need to make significant improvement in irrigation supply.”

USDA

New U.S. agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and under secretaries are not yet in place.

“We don’t have a good read yet on how we can access and gain support from (USDA),” which serves as a sort-of parent agency, Sandison said.

Staying at WSDA

Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson re-appointed Sandison to be agriculture director in January.

“I’m very honored,” he said. “There’s a solemn responsibility associated with this job. I try to do it to the best of my ability and to support the farmers and ranchers around the state. At the same time, we’ve got a lot of responsibilities around food security and food assistance. So to be able to continue developing and improving the various programs we have, because we do a lot of different things, many of which people aren’t really aware of — to continue that progress is very important to me, and I’m committed to seeing things through.”

Positives

“The quality of our ag products really speaks for themselves,” Sandison said. “I think the situation would be much more difficult if we weren’t producing a product that’s sought out by consumers around the world. That’s kept us in the game.”