Tindall Talks About His Start At Save Family Farming

It’s been nearly a year since Ben Tindall took over as the Executive Director of Save Family Farming.  He said while the past eight months have been a steep learning curve, one of the issues that’s stuck out with him is communication.  He said the farming community does a good job communicating with one-and-other, and with legislators.  But when it comes to voters, especially suburban and urban voters that don’t have an existing relationship with the Ag community, that’s one area in need of improvement.

“That demographic we see as critical, that is the ones that are in many ways fueling the policy, fueling the votes to legislators that are making a lot of these policies that are impacting agriculture.  So how can we educate them?  How can we advocate and influence where we shift public opinion there?”

Tindall stressed the next opportunity to communicate will be here in just a few weeks with the start of the 2025 legislative session.  Speaking of the upcoming session, Tindall says one of the main issues will circulate around labor; finding workers, keeping workers and paying workers.

“We saw that over the past several years, during the legislative session, and in particular, the overtime issue.  And again, that issue shows the difficulty in communication and we're trying to figure out how to bridge that dealing with overtime.  Farmers, and the agriculture industry are not opposed to paying the labor well.  We are not.  Farmers are not interested in paying employees poorly.”

Tindall noted farmers across Washington pay employees very well.

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