By Ben Tindall, Save Family Farming Executive Director
As the 2026 legislative session comes to a close, there is at least one thing worth noting: some of the worst anti-farm ideas introduced this year did not make it across the finish line. That is the good news.
The bad news is that stopping bad bills is not the same thing as confronting a crisis. And that is the true indictment of this legislative session.
Early in the year, The USDA issued their Farm Income and Wealth Statistics. Drawing from 2024 USDA data, Washington now ranks 50th in the nation in net farm revenue. That is dead last in profitability and the number itself is staggering.
According to the USDA data, Washington agriculture posted negative $396.266 million in farm income in 2024. That represented a collapse of more than $1.3 billion in lost farm revenue from 2023 to 2024.
Once those numbers from the USDA report were issued, Save Family Farming joined 17 other agricultural organizations and associations in sending a letter to legislative leaders laying out the facts in plain terms. That should have stopped lawmakers in their tracks. It should have dominated the session. It should have triggered a rescue effort.
Washington agriculture is not facing a minor downturn or simply weathering a temporary rough patch. This is a full-blown economic crisis and Washington legislators knew that. They had the numbers. They had the warning. They knew what kind of condition the industry is in.
And yet, instead of responding with urgency, too many in Olympia spent the session entertaining legislation that would have driven labor costs higher, piled on new restrictions, and handed anti-farming activists and opportunistic attorneys more weapons to wield against the very people still fighting to keep this industry alive.
In a state where farms are already being crushed by shrinking margins, rising costs, disappearing infrastructure, and relentless regulatory pressure, these proposals were not simply misguided. They were punitive. They were reckless. And they exposed just how detached too many legislators have become from the reality of producing food in this state.
At the precise moment agriculture needed a lifeline, Olympia behaved as though this was just another year for ideological theater, just another opportunity to appease political interests hostile to production agriculture, and just another chance to place new burdens on an industry already on its knees.
That is what makes this session so infuriating. The worst bills died, but so did any serious effort to address the actual crisis.
Consider HB 2616. Save Family Farming is grateful to Rep. Kristine Reeves for sponsoring legislation intended to engage the crisis in agriculture. The effort acknowledged that a crisis exists and attempted to provide a lifeline for farmers. But the leadership within the House Committee on Consumer Protection & Business granted the bill a public hearing only after the policy cutoff, denying relief and making the process feel like performative pandering.
When Washington ranks 50th in the nation in farm profitability, committees offering nothing more than placating gestures is not leadership.