With the political controversies and community conflict that have too often surrounded the issue of salmon recovery, many in the Washington farming community want to know: what do salmon actually need to recover and thrive?

Scott Schuyler, a tribal elder and the Natural & Cultural Resources Policy Representative for the Upper Skagit Indian Tribe, joins Dillon to explain how many issues affect salmon recovery, including some that rarely make the headlines like harbor seal predation, ocean warming and overfishing in international waters.

Schuyler says good relationships between tribes, farming, and other parts of the community are crucial to a holistic approach to recovering salmon–one that doesn’t get high-centered on a single controversial issue that drives conflict and takes away from other important aspects of recovery.

A troubling proposal for “card check” farmworker unionization and collective bargaining–that would harm farms as well as farmworkers–is still alive and moving in the 2026 legislative session currently underway in Olympia.

Scott Dilley, the WA-based Worker and Farmer Labor Association’s Public Affairs Director, joins Dillon with an update on the process and more details on how the flawed plan would put farms’ futures at risk and leave farmworkers vulnerable to coercion.

Farmers are asking questions after Seattle’s mayor has abruptly replaced Skagit River dam operator Seattle City Light’s leader with anti-agriculture lawyer Dennis McLerran, who boasts connections with a laundry list of manipulative and unethical attacks on farming in Washington state.

Jay Gordon with the Washington State Dairy Federation joins Dillon to detail McLerran’s troubling history with farming in the state, including the widely-criticized What’s Upstream campaign, the EPA’s falsified-science attack on Lower Yakima Valley dairies, and other anti-farm actions.

The farming community is expressing its deep distrust of McLerran as Seattle City Light, the 9th largest public utility in the U.S. that he now leads, attempts to federally re-license its major hydroelectric dams on the Skagit River while avoiding costly fish-passage upgrades by instead converting farmland to fish habitat.

Some experts are warning that the new card-check collective bargaining system proposed in Washington state won’t be the good deal for workers that proponents promise.

Alma Torres-Jones, a former farmworker who now operates her own family’s orchard, tells Dillon she fears that both farmers and farmworkers aren’t aware of the quickly-moving proposal, and won’t have time to consider the plan’s true impacts and likely negative consequences for workers as well as farms.

President Trump’s Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, is coming down hard on Washington State’s Department of Ecology for its attack on an Eastern Washington rancher.

And now even the EPA’s Seattle chief Emma Pokon is adding to the federal criticism of Ecology’s abusive approach.

Toni Meacham, one of the attorneys helping King Ranch in the fiasco, joins Dillon with an update on the massive fines and even secret criminal investigation into the Kings, as well as insight into how she was able to get federal officials’ attention with the situation.

The pressures on family farming in Washington state and across the country continue to mount, but the urban public remains largely unaware of the realities farmers face.

Ben Tindall, Save Family Farming’s Executive Director, joins Dillon to encourage anyone interested in preserving a future for family farming in our state to speak out in support, committing to providing more and more opportunities for everyone to get involved in farming advocacy.

A slate of proposals up for debate in Olympia would roll out a new system of unionization and collective bargaining for farmworkers in Washington state.

But, farmworker advocates Enrique Gastelum, of the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, and Jesse Rojas, formerly of Pick Justice, tell Dillon the devil is in the details, with aspects of the plan that would actually harm farmworkers, not help them.

Hundreds of Whatcom County high school students will get to learn more about what their futures could look like at Whatcom Family Farmers’ upcoming career fair focusing on agriculture and the trades.

But, event organizer Ellie Steensma Corbin tells Dillon the event needs more local businesses to step up and host a booth or even educational presentations to give the students a well-rounded look at potential careers here in the local community.

Businesses wanting to participate in any way can get more information and connect with Ellie here.

The announcement of a completely revamped “food pyramid” from the Trump administration’s US Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is putting a new focus on milk and dairy.

Lee Mielke, longtime dairy markets columnist and commentator, joins Dillon with details on how the new federal health advice elevates dairy foods, and what it could mean for markets and the prices dairy farmers–currently struggling with low returns–receive for their milk.

An 85-year-old lifelong Washington state farmer near Spokane could lose his entire farm if the Washington State Department of Ecology gets its way.

The Department of Ecology is threatening to take Bob Greiff’s Deer Park-area property in an ongoing dispute over a minor water rights technicality.

Greiff joins Dillon to explain how he’s tried to do everything Ecology has asked in order to solve the problem, and how the state continues to dig in its heels with little explanation.