Guest Commentary

LACEY, WASH.–The Governor released additional unnecessary requirements that farmers must follow associated with transportation and workplace safety during a news briefing on Thursday, May 28. Under the guise of protecting farm workers, these requirements (that will carry the weight of regulations but haven’t gone through the legally required, rule-making process) will set up farmers for possible fines and labor-activist lawsuits.

In his public comments, the Governor referenced a delicious grapefruit he had enjoyed for breakfast and the need to protect the hands that helped harvest it. Does the Governor know we don’t grow grapefruit in Washington? Sadly, it’s clear he doesn’t know much about the state’s second largest industry.

Ironically, at the same time of the Governor’s press conference, Washington Farm Bureau staff was in Skagit County handing out thousands of gallons of hand sanitizer to farmers. The same hand sanitizer that the Governor and his staff sat on for months and came to us to get it to the farmers and farmworkers who needed it.

The Governor made no remarks about this effort!

For 100 years Farm Bureau has been there to help farmers during good and bad times. The Farm Bureau has once again risen to the challenge to help farmers during this crisis created by the Governor’s response to COVID-19.

But the Governor keeps piling on our family farmers.

While we have been helping to get masks and sanitizer out to our farmers, we were also engaged in negotiations on the development of the new COVID-19 based requirements that were forced by farm worker activists.

We worked every angle to protect farmers and their employees in our state but were consistently ignored throughout the process. The only voice that mattered to the Governor was the labor activists who represent barely one percent of farm labor in our state.

Growers weren’t equally represented at the negotiating table and Governor excluded growers at his press conference. Clearly, he wasn’t interested in the truth or how farmers will truly be impacted by these new requirements.

The Governor has good reason to fear turning agriculture loose on commenting on his proposals. Last month when he did that, farmers provided more than 500 comments on his unrealistic draft temporary worker housing rules.

These new agricultural COVID-19 requirements are far worse than the housing rules and never were released for public comment. They clearly represent labor activists and ignore the clear examples we provided that the requirements are unrealistic, unnecessary, and impossible to fulfill.

Governor Inslee and his team knowingly sacrificed farmers in order to give a political favor to labor activists.

Here are a few examples of why we are so concerned:

• Quadruples the hand-washing station requirements (now must be placed every 110 yards instead of the existing 440 yards)

• Requires water at these hand-washing stations be kept between 60 and 100 degrees.

• Reduces farmworker transportation capacity

• Requires temperature checks

• Implements additional mandated PPE requirements even when masks, gloves, etc., remain in short supply.

Where will farmers get the equipment and parts to construct all these new handwashing stations by next week? How do you keep water warm in the middle of an orchard block?

These are just some of the many questions we have regarding these rash requirements.

The decisions by the Governor’s office are rooted in political games not sound science.

Making politically fueled regulations and ignoring science destroys the ability of family farms to survive, eliminates vital farmworker jobs and ultimately removes food from our tables.

Just because you were knowingly left out of the conversation before does not mean you have to be silent now.

Let the Governor know your frustrations. They can’t keep tying the hands that feed them.

Please review the new agricultural COVID-19 requirements and let the Governor and his staff know they won’t work in real life.

Send comments to: Caitlyn Jekel, Senior Policy Advisor, Labor, 360-902-7190,

[email protected]; JT Austin, Senior Policy Advisor, Natural Resources & Environment, 360-902-0638, [email protected]

––Washington Farm Bureau