Friday, February 11, 2022
CapitalPress.com 11
Q&A: What does ideal agriculture in Washington look like for you?
Continued from Page 1
What would you say
needs to be improved?
Inslee: Well, I can’t point
to any specific thing ... except
I would like to have a sit-
down conversation over tea,
or even a cold one at some
point, with hundreds of thou-
sands of people. That could
improve it, but time doesn’t
permit that, unfortunately.
I think there’s some things
that I would like to engage
the agricultural industry more
in some of our mutual chal-
lenges, I do think there’s been
some improvement there.
I’d like to see them more
active in helping to figure out
what we do about the extreme
weather events that are dam-
aging the ag industry right
now.
I was talking to the grape
growers in Walla Walla that
had to deal with smoke dam-
aging their grapes; talked
to wheat growers, produc-
tion was down 20-30% last
year because of heat. I’ve
talked to all kinds of growers
really concerned about water
supply.
The one thing I hope to
engage the industry more in
is trying to find their insights
on how to reduce carbon pol-
lution that’s really going to
damage, over time, the ag
industry in Washington state.
We’re in very dire straits
in the next several decades
because of basic heat,
because of drought, because
of extremes both hot and
cold, because of flooding.
We could use more leader-
ship in the ag industry helping
the state figure out what the
right approach to reduce car-
bon pollution is to save the ag
industry.
Any response to crit-
ics who say your policies
and regulations are making
farming more difficult for
them?
Inslee: Well, I’d have to
know what people are refer-
ring to.
I’m thinking of the man-
datory riparian buffer bill,
as one example.
Inslee: I have to believe
that people want to preserve
the iconic salmon species
of our state. This is a ratio-
nal way to do it, because the
salmon are going to go extinct
if the water is too hot, and
the water is going to be too
hot if we don’t have shade in
the rivers. So this is a reason-
able approach to work with
landowners to try to main-
tain some of (that) shade for
the rivers.
I’ve got to believe that peo-
ple want salmon, and you just
have to face reality: You’re
not going to have salmon if
the water boils them — now,
that overstates it — if it’s too
hot for them to survive. This
is a two-fer — the salmon are
getting hit both by the lack of
shade, which helps heat the
water, but also by the global
climate change issue, which is
heating up the climate in gen-
eral. This is a dire problem,
and so I think this is a rational
approach.
I just have to believe peo-
ple don’t want to see salmon
go extinct. If you don’t care,
then yeah, I can understand
why you wouldn’t like it. But
I have to believe people care.
When you think of the
future, what does ideal agri-
culture in Washington look
like for you?
Inslee: The word “innova-
tive” comes to mind. “Inno-
vative” and “value-added.”
I think our strengths in agri-
culture are the fact that we’re
constantly innovating and
Office of Gov. Jay Inslee
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown confers with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee at the United Na-
tions COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, last fall.
being ahead of the curve tech-
nologically. ...
Our strength is hav-
ing high-value products.
So we’ve got the best wine,
the best apples and the best
cheese. And we’ve done that
because our ag industry lead-
ers have been always look-
ing to innovate. I think that’s a
strength that we ought to help
them by giving them educa-
tionally oriented people that
can help provide those tech-
nological innovations, and be
willing to help any way we
can to promote them.
I’ve seen that time after
time, from the whole change
in how we grow apples. It’s
just been remarkable to see the
changes to make them easier
to harvest and less water-in-
tensive. That’s because we
have a lot of innovators. The
people out there with a bunch
of apples are as innovative as
folks in the aerospace indus-
try. I think any way we can
help to continue that dynamic
is really, really useful.
What is the ultimate goal
for the dams on the lower
Snake River? Do you have
an expected outcome for the
federal/state assessment?
Will that provide the final
answer on the dams?
Inslee: I don’t know the
final answer. ... As you know,
Sen. (Patty) Murray and I
have initiated the process to
ask the question, not to give
the answer at the moment:
What would be necessary
to replace the services if the
dams were breached? What
would be within the achiev-
able to replace the transpor-
tation services of the avail-
able river? What would be
necessary to replace the irri-
gation benefits? What would
be necessary to replace the
power method?
So we are starting the pro-
cess to ask that question. And
I think one of the things to
end this endless cycle of lit-
igation, it just makes sense
to get those answers before
decisions are made one way
or another.
We know there’s a sig-
nificant salmon concern
and extinction concerns, but
we haven’t effectively yet
asked the question (of) how
we would replace those ser-
vices. I think that’s really
important.
We are asking people
to come into this discus-
sion with an open mind and
a willingness to try to get
answers to those questions.
We need people’s help to do
that, we’ve started that pro-
cess. We hope by late sum-
mer we can have a report to
help guide that question.
So I don’t have an answer,
USDA NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE
Local Work Group Meeting for Marion County
it’s an open question at the
moment.
Do you think the assess-
ment is going to provide
that answer, though? You
talked about the endless
cycle. Will this be the end
of that cycle, where we can
all point to it and say, “This
is what we need”?
Inslee: Well, no, there’s
still going to be a lot of con-
troversy, no matter what the
decision. ... I expect that. But
I think this will give fair-
minded people, who really
have the willingness to ask
these questions, some guid-
ance about this.
Some folks who have
advocated breaching have not
yet answered the question:
How do we replace these ser-
vices? Those who oppose
breaching, some have been
unwilling to look for alter-
nate solutions. I think all of
us need to have an open mind
to ask these questions and try
to get the best answer that we
can.
I come at it from having
strong connections to both
sides of the values. I’m very
committed that ... our grand-
kids are not going to have a
diminished Washington state,
and a Washington state with-
out salmon is a very dimin-
ished Washington state. And
I’m very committed for our
grandkids to have access to
salmon.
But I’m also committed,
in part because I spent two
decades in Central Washing-
ton, to understand the entan-
glement of the dams with the
whole story of Eastern Wash-
ington, and the passions
around dams. They’re iconic,
they’re totemic, they’re sym-
bols of development. And
they’ve meant so much to
people in the family histories.
Mabel Thompson was
a leader of the Democratic
Party up in (Grant County).
I remember her telling me
the story that she was 8, 9, 10
years old or something when
the water came onto the land.
She said she remembered
her family all dressed up in
their
Sunday-go-to-meet-
ing clothes and they walked
out and literally watched the
water come down the ditch.
And that was just such a piv-
otal moment in their family
history, and the whole com-
munity, obviously.
So I understand how
embedded these dams (are)
into the culture, thought pro-
cess and economy, obvi-
ously, of Eastern Washing-
ton. I get both of these things.
The question is, can we have
both? That’s the question we
want to try to get answered.
How do you see overtime
rules affecting farmers and
ranchers?
Inslee: Well, they’re
affecting everybody by hav-
ing adequately compensated
people who feed us. The peo-
ple who feed us are both the
owners of the property and
the people who work there,
and they both are import-
ant in agriculture. And all of
them need to be treated fairly,
and I believe ... people who
feed us ought to be treated
fairly like other workers.
I believe in fairness for
working people. And these
folks work really, really hard.
Everybody in agriculture
works hard.
Sometimes people, when
they use the word “indus-
try” in “agriculture industry,”
forget the workers. They’re
part of the industry, and
they ought to be fairly com-
pensated. I don’t think they
should be in any diminished
class. I do think historically,
people who work on the
land, who are not owners of
the land, in our history of this
country, have been treated as
kind of second-class work-
ers. ... That’s not how I feel.
How do you see COVID-
19 rules and regulations
affecting farmers and
ranchers?
Inslee: I hope that both
the people who work on the
property and their employers
care about the health of the
people who work there.
We have tried to have
reasonable rules that under-
stand the difficult challenges
that ag has, particularly with
people who do not work
year-round.
We have set COVID rules
that have been both protec-
tive of employees and have
been, with exquisite effort,
in part on my part, because
I was involved in many,
many, many meetings, try-
ing to fashion, for instance,
the requirements for residen-
tial bed space and ventila-
tion, to try to have things that
would work for the employ-
ers as well. We spent hours
and hours and hours trying
to fashion something that
would work for both parties
here.
We did the best we could
and we’ve had some success,
although we still had losses
of employees. Some employ-
ees lost their lives due to
COVID. ... This is a really
tough virus.
But I can just tell you that
I was engaged in discus-
sions with quite a number of
orchardists, farmers, farmers’
representatives, as well as
representatives of employee
groups to try to fashion these
rules.
So all I can tell you is, I’m
sure people can criticize the
rules, but we exercised our
listening skills as power-
fully as we could to see what
could work for everybody
concerned.
And we have been very
committed to getting access
to folks who work in the agri-
cultural industry to the things
that keep them safe, includ-
ing masks and vaccinations.
We have made intensive
efforts to make vaccinations
available to people who work
in the industry. We set people
up in the packing houses and
farms to actually have vacci-
nations on site. I was at one of
the first up in the Chelan dis-
trict, and I think we did some
good work there.
We have committed Wash-
ington resources as inten-
sively or more so for agricul-
ture than any other industry, I
can tell you that.
One of our reasons is we
wanted to have equity in the
effort to fighting COVID and
also help the industry by try-
ing to keep people from being
sick and not being able to
work. So we’ve done a lot to
keep the industry as healthy
as humanly possible.
Any message to farmers
and ranchers?
Inslee: Thank you. Thank
you for being so creative and
innovative and diligent and
we hope to help in the ways
that we can. We’ve got the
best ag industry in the world
because we have the most cre-
ative agricultural leadership.
We find a lot of positive
leadership in the ag indus-
try. We found a lot of positive
approaches when we worked
through the rules on COVID.
We are glad to keep that ball
rolling.
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February 25th, 2022 • 9:00am - 11:00am
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be made at least 48 hours before the meeting to Les Bachelor
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