The Farming Show

Homes, businesses and farms in Whatcom County are reeling after sustaining devastating damage in the second major Nooksack River flood in four years.

Alexandra Williams, a Deming-area blueberry farmer and President of the Whatcom County Farm Bureau, joins Dillon to share the impacts this month’s flood had on her family’s farm, and ask hard questions about what authorities are doing to manage the river and stop what’s becoming a terrible pattern.

All-new documentary “Farming on the Brink” provides an unfiltered look at the increasing challenges confronting local farming, particularly the rising costs necessary to sustain operations.

Launched publicly last week, this upcoming film chronicles the journey of Manuel Imperial, a committed second-generation farmer whose family immigrated from the Philippines over 40 years ago and begin farming in Wapato, Washington.

He joins Dillon to talk about the new film and grappling with preserving his family’s farm in the face of escalating regulations and overwhelming expenses.

Whatcom County has a long and storied history of farming, and what farming looks like in the county now is much different than many decades ago, often with only old barns remaining as landmarks of the farms that once were.

Jeff Barclay, a retiree with a longtime love of photography, joins Dillon with details on his passion project to document all the old barns in the county–an effort that so far has already produced two locally-available photo books, called Old Barns of Whatcom County and Old Barns of Whatcom County, Volume 2.

Embarrassing revelations from internal documents are exposing U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s true motive behind legal attacks against three Washington state dairies in the Lower Yakima Valley–and it’s not protecting public health or the environment.

Jay Gordon, Policy Director at the Washington State Dairy Federation, joins Dillon to call out the ugly truth behind the EPA’s and U.S. Department of Justice’s abusive legal games that have already pushed multiple longtime family farms out of business, apparently with no end in sight.

It’s the 15th year of the Lynden Ag Show, and over 500 farmers, farm support businesses, university researchers and others are expected to attend the show Wednesday and Thursday, Dec. 3-4.

Chris Benedict, Professor and Regional Extension Specialist with Washington State University, joins Dillon with details on the event, which includes the Washington Small Fruit Conference and the Northwest Potato Conference as part of the show.

Local farmers are calling out the Washington State Department of Ecology for adding to local confusion about its Whatcom water rights adjudication lawsuit with a recent attempt to correct “rumors” and “misinformation.”

Fred Likkel, Whatcom Family Farmers’ Executive Director, joins Dillon with a breakdown of Ecology’s inaccuracies and an update on the ongoing adjudication court case.

Recent data shows Washington state’s net farm income has plummeted to among nearly the worst in the nation, following years of state measures ratcheting up a long list of farming costs.

Randy Fortenbery, an agricultural economist at Washington State University, joins Dillon with the data and what it indicates may be involved in the big change.

Despite the crippling uncertainty Whatcom County farmers and other water users are facing in the state’s water rights adjudication lawsuit there, a top Washington state expert says there is hope for a resolution to the unfolding crisis.

Tom Tebb, the former director of the state’s Office of the Columbia River joins Dillon ahead of his address at Whatcom Family Farmers’ 2025 Farmer Rally to preview what he plans to share about a better path forward for Whatcom water.