Earned Income Goes Up in Washington
From the Western Ag Network, I’m Bob Larson. The latest USDA numbers show Washington’s farmers jumped from last in earned income in 2024 to 30th in 2025.
Pam Lewison, Ag Director at the Washington Policy Center, says the jump from a negative -$238 million to a positive $1.27 billion was inconceivable …
LEWISON … “So, I started to look at it because I thought, you know, I farm, I don’t recall having won the farm lottery between 2024 and 2025. And certainly our policies on both the federal and state level didn’t change so drastically that I suddenly earned millions of dollars between those two years. So, what happened?”
One thing, Lewison says was cutting back dramatically on contract labor for things like pruning, weeding, and harvesting …
LEWISON … “And when I say “dramatically,” it’s like it dropped off a cliff. We went from $1-billion in 2024, a billion dollars in those contract expenses, to $109.8-million.”
Which seems unbelievable …
LEWISON … “It works out to be like an 89% drop. It’s a huge amount that farmers just said, okay, I’m not going to hire my neighbor across the road to harvest my wheat this year. I’m going to spend the fifteen-hundred-bucks in parts to get my combine running again and I’m going to harvest my wheat.”
Lewison says like pinching pennies at home, farmers are doing the same thing but on a much larger scale.
To see the earned income numbers for every state, go to the USDA website at www.data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?
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