Opinion: What you didn’t know about Washington state and Thanksgiving …

Date: Friday, November 10, 2023

When it comes to Washington's agriculture sector, Pam Lewison of the Washington Policy Center believes countless Washingtonians take it for granted. — File photo

When it comes to Washington’s agriculture sector, Pam Lewison believes countless Washingtonians take it for granted

Pam Lewison
Washington Policy Center

The Biblical admonition that “a prophet is not appreciated in his own land” is a keen observation on how we often take things for granted. The people close to us seem common because, to us, they are. Often that means people take the growth and gifts of those around them for granted.

The same is true for our surroundings. Many of us have views of mountains, the Puget Sound, or rolling Washington prairie and we take it for granted. We don’t know what we’re missing until it is gone. People leave and miss the splendor. They return to experience everything new again.

When it comes to Washington’s agriculture sector, countless Washingtonians take it for granted. People can speak vaguely about Washington’s apples, but they really have no idea the scope of our state’s agricultural productivity or its impact on our state’s employment and economy.

This year, for Thanksgiving, I wanted to write a column that captured Washington’s bounty of agricultural production, and what our state means to food production across the nation on the very day we celebrate our national prosperity.

So I wrote one and it is now published in The Capital Press. I hope you read it, share it, and find something wonderful about your state in it.

As an added bonus, I included my secret instructions to cooking a Washingtonian turkey. You can thank me later.

Pam Lewison is the director of the Center for Agriculture at the Washington Policy Center.