Essential Workers

Agriculture and food processing provide over 164,000 jobs in Washington state.

"Farm labor is really a critical part of the economic health of rural communities. What it brings in is not only employment on farms, but also employment in support industries like fertilizer and supplies. And then there are industries like processing, such as potato processing in the Tri-Cities, which is a huge industry.

Nearly half of those jobs are in crop production and animal production: planting, harvesting, and raising our food. Around one quarter of those jobs come from support industries that produce farm tools and equipment, fertilizers and pesticides, etc. The remaining jobs mostly come from food processing facilities and post-harvest crop activities like cleaning and transporting the harvest.

Prior to the 1900s, around three to four times as many people lived in rural areas compared to urban areas. Nowadays, it's flipped, and about twice as many people live in urban areas than in rural areas. As a result, a lot of people are becoming more separated from agriculture, and there are a lot less people producing. What happens, then, is kind of a hollowing out of middle America, where you don't have people as connected to the rural lifestyle and the rural communities. The problem with that is that those rural communities aren't as healthy. They don't have as vibrant of a support system, and they also don't have the workers to support that system. So, those workers really help to sustain that local economy."

Madison Moore, Agriculture Economist, WSDA