Between tighter regulations, rising labor costs and the crackdown on immigration, farmers are on uncertain footing — including Washington’s iconic apple orchards.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Small family-owned farms in Washington increasingly face challenges coming from seemingly every angle, from local water regulations to rising labor costs and new concerns about the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.
For the owners of Bi-Zi Farms outside Vancouver, farming is more than a full-time job; it’s a lifestyle. According to Joe Zimmerman, the farm’s finance and marketing manager, his great-great-grandparents settled on the property in 1872.
“Well, I’m kind of the owner of the place,” said Bill Zimmerman, Joe’s father. “It means heritage to me. All my family has worked and worked to put this together and build what’s here … there’s a lot of history behind what’s here.”
Bi-Zi grows fresh fruits and vegetables, selling them out of their year-round farm store. But being able to keep their doors open and please the customers has become harder to do.
“We do this because we really feel a connection to this community, to the people of this community, ya know,” said Joe.
“I thought at my age that I would be pretty well set, and I’d be in the happy golden years kinda thing … and boy it sure hasn’t worked out that way for us,” said Bill.
“We’re getting hit from all sides,” added Joe.
The farm employs 145 people, each earning minimum wage. In Washington, that’s about $16 an hour, which is among the highest minimum rates in the country. They rely on migrant workers for much of the field work.
Under Washington law, agricultural workers must earn at least minimum wage — and since the beginning of 2024, they’ve also been eligible for overtime after 40 hours of work in a week.
But the cost of paying worker wages could soon be the least of farmers’ worries. Some of President Donald Trump’s first executive orders upon taking office seek to crack down on immigration, and his administration has already ramped up efforts to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants.
Now, Joe and his family are looking at the potential long-term impacts to their farm.
“Most of them have continued to come and go to Mexico and the Portland area for the last 15 to 20 years,” Joe said of their migrant labor force. “At what point are our employees able to go back to Mexico and then can’t come back?”
“Creating a vacuum, a hole that has to be filled someplace,” added Bill.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are the local regulations. Clark County limits the amount of fresh water they can use on their fields, resulting in fewer crops.
“A whole lot of the vegetables that we would have normally grown we had to purchase and bring in, so instead of having costs that were pennies, they were dollars,” said Joe.
“It’s been a real frustrating road,” Bill said.
It’s not just Bi-Zi farms feeling the pressure. According to recent agricultural census data reported by The Columbian, 187 Washington apple farms closed between 2017 and 2022. Just over 2,000 remain.
“For small farmers, it’s really hard,” said Michael Schadler, president of the Washington Apple Commission. “Basically, for the last four or five years we’ve been in one of the most difficult operating environments for Washington farmers and Washington apple farmers in living memory.”
For Washington apple farms, which produce some 6.5 billion pounds of apples each year, over-supply paired with skyrocketing production costs are putting small farms out of business.
“We’ll see what it looks like on the other side, but if we turn the corner soon enough, hopefully we can get some of those small growers to stay in the industry,” Schadler said.
The onus, according to Bill Zimmerman, is on the Washington Legislature to step in and help.
Washington state Rep. Adam Bernbaum, a Democrat from the Olympic Peninsula, is sponsoring several bills this legislative session aimed at strengthening the agricultural industry. They include grants to help small farms get organic certifications and to make it easier for senior citizens to access local produce.
“We can do a lot more, and I think that the challenge in this year is going to be to try and find places where we can protect the small farming infrastructure that’s already in place and hopefully expand a few programs to make it easier for folks,” Bernbaum said.
“It’s this thing of, (at) what point do people finally say, ‘I’ve had enough.’ I have all of these agencies that want a little piece of flesh, and at what point do you just bleed to death because you don’t have enough flesh to give?” said Joe Zimmerman. “That’s it, yeah.”
