King County Farmer Pt 1
I’m Bob Larson. Whether you’re a wheat farmer or tree fruit grower in Eastern Washington, or a specialty crop farmer in the heart of King county, folks in agriculture, it seems, are all being regulated to death.Rosella Mosby and her husband Burr grow a range of hand grown and harvested vegetables on about 350 acres in Auburn, and as an active member in her local Farm Bureau, she says it’s an uphill battle …
MOSBY … “I don’t think that it’s going to get any easier for agriculture in Washington state and since King county and Pierce county, since we’re a dual-county Farm Bureau, we have a lack of representation in Olympia and so we really need to be taking a look at how we reach out to those representatives and, not only the representatives, but the consumers that are electing those representatives.”
Mosby says fewer and fewer people seem to know what goes on in farming these days…
MOSBY … “I think at one time we had more of a common background, right. I think, you know, grandpa lived on the farm or we all knew somebody who was working in agriculture and I don’t think we can say that any more especially in Washington, specifically our area, King, Pierce, Snohomish. We’re tech and Boeing and Amazon. We have all of these other influences now and so when you don’t know people who work in agriculture you have all of these assumptions about what happens in agriculture.”
Listen tomorrow for more on the messaging challenges facing folks in agriculture and what it will take to level the playing field.