OLYMPIA — Sen. Kevin Van De Wege (D-Lake Sutherland) has been named Legislator of the Year by the Washington State Farm Bureau in recognition of his work in support of farm and ranch families across Washington state.

Van De Wege, who chairs the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources & Parks Committee, has served on natural resource committees in every one of his 18 years as an elected official in the Senate and House. Prior to winning election to the Senate in 2016, Van De Wege served five terms in the House.

“Knowing how hard the Farm Bureau works on behalf of our farm families, I accept this recognition proudly and gratefully, and as confirmation that my efforts in the Legislature are making a difference for folks,” Van De Wege said. “I learned the importance of agriculture at an early age, and I’ve never forgotten the pivotal role it plays in our lives every day.”

Van De Wege spent his early adulthood working at a dairy before becoming a volunteer firefighter and pursuing a career in firefighting. Along the way, he earned degrees in fire administration and fire investigation, certification as a paramedic, a BA in Social Science from Washington State University and an MA in Public Administration from Fort Hays University.

For the 2024 legislative session, Van De Wege’s actions on behalf of farm families included:

  • Shortly prior to the start of session, Van De Wege asked the state Department of Fish and Wildlife to collaborate with Farm Bureau staff on agency-request legislation to improve the state’s outdated process for mitigating damage to crops from deer and elk. Passed and signed into law last month, Senate Bill 5784 updates the limits on damage claims to reflect modern costs and prioritizes payouts according to percentage of loss compared to gross sales, ensuring that smaller farmers receive faster relief. The bill also funds a three-year pilot program to monitor elk and develop recommendations to prevent crop and property damage and, ultimately, reduce reliance on the damage program.
  • A bill heard in Van De Wege’s committee, SB 5972, proposed sweeping limits on the use of insecticides identified as harmful to populations of pollinators. Van De Wege solicited Farm Bureau staff to identify potential unintended consequences to crops and then amended the bill to exempt the use of the insecticides to licensed applications and the production of agricultural commodities. This version, which passed and was signed into law, improves environmental protections without disrupting crops critical to the farm community and the state economy.
  • More broadly, Van De Wege invited Farm Bureau staff to testify in a pre-session work session on critical issues facing the industry, including agriculture overtime and agriculture-exempt fuels under the Climate Commitment Act, raising awareness of important issues that came up in the 2024 legislative session.
  • To protect the agricultural industry from adverse effects stemming from the use of erroneous or statistically unsound data, Van De Wege amended HB 2226 to require academic standards for employee survey data on the H-2A worker program and on hand harvesters of apples, cherries, pears and blueberries.