Preservation
Agriculture is an integral part of our heritage and identity as a people. Farms are essential for our existence. Our quality of life depends on the biodiversity of our farmlands.
Our farmland is full of hidden treasures. Occasionally, when doing handwork in the fields, we run across arrowheads, a reminder that native Americans, the Suquamish tribe and their descendants, fished, hunted small game, gathered berries and roots thousands of years before us, on this very land. We also unearth small pieces of farm equipment when plowing, time to time, that again reminds us that Japanese and Filipino immigrants had been farming these fields for the past century and their hard work became so legendary, as they produced the largest crop of Marshall strawberries in the whole Northwest
Our land is our legacy. We look to our past to consider what of value do we really have to pass on to the future generations, and it is our farmland. It is irreplaceable.
Farmlands
Fertile soil is a dynamic resource. It forms slowly and takes generations to replace if lost. Healthy farmland increases our resilience to natural disasters like floods + fire.
The green fields filter our drinking water and absorb large amounts of stormwater runoff. Farmed land emits fewer greenhouse gasses than developed land; biomass sequesters carbon which in turn helps mitigate climate change.
