Weather, Funding Top Issues Facing Washington Ag In 2025

The farming industry is facing a variety of challenges, and some of those challenges are specific to a sector or a commodity, but some are widespread.

Derek Sandison, Director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture says one of the biggest challenges producers are facing this year is the ongoing drought.  Currently over 25% of the state is under a D-3, or Extreme Drought, designation, which Sandison said created challenges throughout much of the growing season.

“That's a problem, continues to be a problem," Sandison noted.  "As you know, we've seen significant droughts within my career since the first one in 1977, but we've had periodic droughts and some of those have been extremely damaging with respect to ag infrastructure, trees, and so forth, but also just in the production in a drought year.”

Ag Research Is Vital For the Evergreen State

Another issue before the farming community, he noted comes from the other Washington.

Sandison said Ag research is vital for a state like Washington, where over 300 crops are grown, and when federal dollars to promote that research are not available, it’s the growers that suffer.

“And Washington State University, by the way, is one of the, one of the major providers of that research," Sandison said.  "But in order to stay on the cutting edge, and also to deal with some of the input cost issues, if we can find ways, innovative ways, to reduce those input costs, it's very important.  So, research, a cornerstone of our industry, and we're just not, we're not seeing enough support for research at the federal level. So that would help greatly, I think.”

Sandison pointed out another issue is labor, not only the cost by the lack of available workers. 

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