Tomorrow is election day and a record number of Americans have voted early, but if you are waiting until Tuesday to cast your ballot, a group of farmers wants you to know the issues on the line for agriculture.
The election will have a direct impact on the farming industry locally, statewide, and nationally for years to come. Washing state farmers launched iEatiVote.com, to let consumers know about the challenges producers are dealing with.
According to farmer Sarah Howard, “You don’t know if you vote a certain way, maybe that candidate that you voted for doesn’t care about local farms, because they don’t all care. They’re not all concerned about the plight of their local farmers.”
Howard says that with each election it is important for the farming communities to reach out and talk with people in their area about what is happening on today’s farms.
She says in most cases people wanted to stay connected to their food: “We might not realize that fully as farmers because we are already so connected to what we eat, but everybody who puts food in their mouth deserves to have a choice about what they put in their mouth and they deserve to know a little bit about where it came from.”
That is the goal of iEatiVote.com. A big issue a lot of farmers face is ag labor.
Howard says that critics do not understand farmers want to hire consistent skilled workers and want to pay them a living wage.
“Our workers work hard, and they deserve to be paid well, but if we can’t afford to pay them, we can’t afford to hire them to begin with, and if we’re not hiring people, those people’s families aren’t getting supported by us,” she adds. “There needs to be a balance in what farmers are being paid for their goods...”
Howard hopes this website will be used not just until Tuesday, but for all elections moving forward.
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For more information from “I Eat, I Vote”, click HERE.