Breaking the Harvest: How Washington’s Farm Losses Reveal a National Crisis of Policy, Consolidation, and Rural Mental Health

Washington’s loss of 3,700 farms in five years exposes a deeper national crisis—where rising costs, aggressive state regulations, and accelerating corporate consolidation are killing family farms.

Washington has shed more than 3,700 farms in just five years—roughly two operations a day. The number comes from the USDA’s 2022 Census of Agriculture and lands alongside a sobering state finding: agricultural workers die by suicide at far higher rates than the general population. Together, the numbers trace a pressure system where policy costs outpace margins, markets consolidate, and people—farmers, families, hired crews—are the ones bearing the load.