WSFB: Labor, CCA Key Issues Heading Into 2025

The Washington Legislative Session starts January 13th, and already the farming community is preparing for a host of issues that will have major impacts now and well into the future.  Bre Elsey, Director of Governmental Affairs at the Washington Farm Bureau, said when looking at the data, labor will be one of the most pressing topics.  She noted labor is the #1 input cost for farmers and ranchers, and labor costs in Washington are currently over 400% higher than the national average.

“This is critical. It is impacting farmers and ranchers across the state and it's something that needs to be addressed and to do that, we will continue to work on some type of overtime mitigation, some kind of solution to that really critical issue for farmers," Elsey said.  "And then, you will also see a new attempt for farmworker unionization, and we have to delve a little deeper into what the impacts on agriculture would be.”

Another issue having a big impact on the pocketbooks of farmers, the Climate Commitment Act.  So, are there any discussions to get the farming community the CCA exemption they were promised?

“Luckily, we've had really good bipartisan conversations about a fix to the Climate Commitment Act," she said.  "Of course, last year there was not a lot of political will to make changes to any of the bills that were going to be initiatives on the ballot.  Now that that has passed. It's really time to sit down at the table and start working in earnest on what those fixes would look like.  And agriculture does deserve, they have a legal right to have this exemption for fuels that are used for agriculture purposes, and it really is incumbent upon the legislature to sit down and say, hey, there might have been unintended consequences.  It's time to get that fixed. Let's bring everybody to the table and figure out what that looks like for the future.” 

Elsey noted that CCA exemption is permanent, and the Farm Bureau wants to make sure that “it's fixed forever”.

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