CHELAN COUNTY, Wash. — As the growing season begins, farmers in Central Washington are hoping for relief from the financial stress that has made the Evergreen State’s agricultural industry the least profitable in the entire nation.
Latest data available says that the state went from $1.2 billion in profit in 2023 to $293 million in debt in 2024.
“Overall, our prices that we’re getting paid are the same as it was 30 years ago, but our costs, our prices getting paid here, and our costs are clear up here. So anybody can do that math,” said Blaine Smith, the owner of Bountiful Orchards in Chelan County.
Smith says wage increases have put pressure on profits. After both the pandemic-- when the southern border closed-- and the recent immigration crackdown since 2025, workers who used to come to Washington during the busy, nonstop harvest season have been hard to find.
Smith says it means relying on the H2A guest worker program, which also requires farmers to provide housing and transportation costs.
In 2022, Washington also modified the state’s overtime wage laws to include farm and crop workers. While the change was phased in, it upended a system in which workers were paid per piece picked, and they would work long days, close to double the 40-hour-a-week minimum.
“If [farm owners] can afford it, then we’ll be happy to work overtime. Now that they are not making any profit, all the guys are working just 40 hours a week, and that’s it,” said Gilberto Cacho, an orchard worker.
“If they want to make more hours, now they’ve got to go get a second or third job somewhere else,” Smith echoed.
A Washington State University study found that an average box of honeycrisp apples costs growers $54 for a box to produce, though the market only pays $40 for it.
The same study found 14.9 cents per every dollar of the price consumers pay makes it to farmers, down from 17.5 cents in 2021.
Combined with rising fuel costs, equipment costs, and other inflationary pressures, it’s forcing farmers like Leo Betancourt and Smith to make hard choices.
Betancourt’s family first moved from Mexico in 1991 to the Wenatchee Valley because of how well workers did there. In the 2010s, he bought his own orchard. This year has been the hardest for him yet, falling thousands of dollars short of profit the last few years.
For several years, Smith has had to sell land to pay off debt from the previous season. Most of it has turned into small housing developments.
This summer, Betancourt, who owns the neighboring Betancourt Orchards put his on the market as well.
“That was not very easy because I want to keep going as a grower.” Betancourt said, “I like to be a farmer, so [it was] very tough.
USDA data shows that from 2024 to 2025, 576 farms closed across the state. Smaller and moderate farms dropped in number, and dropped in average acres as the data shows, the largest farms grew in size.
“My wife used to say that money grew on trees. Well, it isn’t true anymore.” Smith said, “Those extra pressures are adding fuel to the fire of what’s going to bury the farmer.”