Washington farms are not what you think

This year's legislative session featured proposals to "modernize" agriculture through the forced creation of collective bargaining units. Many activists and legislative advocates persistently implied farmers and ranchers were backward and uneducated, going so far as to cast food producers as "plantation owners."

These aspersions are beneath the open-minded, liberated state Washington believes itself to be.

Home to tree fruit orchards, grain growing operations, hop farms, livestock ranches, potato farms, egg farms, and about 300 other types of commodity producing operations, Washington state is...