Hi and welcome to Save Family Farming’s new blog!

As the Executive Director, I wanted to initiate this maiden voyage by letting you know that we’re thrilled you’re here and to see that you are interested in the work and mission of Save Family Farming.

The goal of this blog is to be another tool to communicate, in an easy-to-digest way, the needs of farming in Washington state and the urgency that we all need to rally around this life-sustaining industry. Because, last time I checked, 100 out of 100 people need food to survive. So we need to protect the production of safe, affordable, and accessible food here in our state.

We like to say here that family farms are the backbone of American agriculture. They play a crucial role in our economy, in our environment, and in our communities. The mission of Save Family Farming is to make sure that these essential farms thrive for generations to come.

This brings me to one of the big questions that Save Family Farming has wrestled with over the past couple of years…

Who are we and what is our identity?

We’ve taken some hard looks at answering that question and looking at where we fit into the mission of supporting farms and food production. After tackling that hard work, I’m excited to say that we have identified several things that I’ll start outlining for you.

We’re going on a trip

Save Family Farming’s vision is for “a united and thriving Washington farming community, now and for future generations.” That is the goal that we’re working toward. It’s like we’re on a trip and the destination is that “united and thriving Washington farming community.” But, now we have to figure out how to get there. We need a roadmap. For Save Family Farming, our roadmap is our mission statement which is that “Save Family Farming speaks out to protect Washington’s family farming community through advocacy, outreach, and public education.”

So, we have our destination and we know how to get there by the route written out on our roadmap. But what do we use to get us to the destination? What vehicle are we going to use? (…am I killing the metaphor yet?) The vehicle that we, at Save Family Farming, are dedicated to using to get us to the destination are advocacy and communications. Personally, my expressed dream for Save Family Farming is that we would be agriculture’s strongest and most reliable communications arm, reaching out and connecting with our target audience: the non-farming urban/suburban voter.

Hard-hitting, laser-focused communications is the way that we’ll be able to reach the destination. More specifically, we are as committed as ever to creating impactful articles, papers, op-eds, videos, podcasts, websites, billboards, social media posts, radio, and short reels. That’s not an exhaustive list but it’s a start.

On the advocacy front, we’re working with other commissions, associations, organizations, farms, and individuals to develop a growing network that is committed to protecting family farms throughout the state. We’re hosting rallies and events to bring farming advocates together to collaborate and become unitedly stronger. We also utilize resources such as text alerts and mailing lists to activate and engage our subscribers to action.

It’s in our DNA

So, after our collective “soul searching,” some of the qualities that we greatly value as part of the core DNA of Save Family Farming would include:

  1. Speaking the truth with boldness. We have gained a bit of a reputation as the guard dog that bites. This guard dog isn’t biting to be mean but it’s biting those who may harm the thing the dog is tasked with protecting. Save Family Farming believes wholeheartedly that family farming is something to be protected. We also emphasize the word family. Ultimately, we are about protecting the families that rely on the farms for their employment and livelihood. But also families in the state that rely on farming for our daily food! We all need to see family farming protected and Save Family Farming is about working toward that goal.
  2. Factual and data-driven. We never want to make claims that we cannot support with facts. We want to be a source of information that can be trusted and that is relied upon. We don’t take that lightly. The goal of Save Family Farming is not to build on hype or to simply appeal to anchorless emotion but we want to be rooted in the facts. Trust is something that is of utmost importance to us.
  3. Education of the public opinion. We want to help the majority of the public who rely on agriculture for their daily food but have little understanding of what actually goes into the production of that food. It would be a beautiful thing to know that the general population of our state does not think that food comes from grocery stores but it comes from women and men working around the state throughout the year to provide food for them.

Come travel with us!

Okay, that’s a little bit of who we are. We know that we cannot reach that destination alone and we’re looking for advocates who care about fresh food, healthy land, and a strong economy. Be a part of the trip with us. Join our mailing list and sign up to be a text advocate, share an article or video with a friend, support our latest documentary project, become a part of our Urban Advisory Team, and pass the word on what Save Family Farming is doing.

We’ll get there together!