What Can Be Done To Address The Growing Urban-Rural Divide?

Many in the farming community are well aware of the urban-rural divide that exists not just in the Northwest, but across the country. But where does the blame for the divide belong? Some say the media in larger, more metropolitan areas deserve much of that blame.

Pam Lewison with the Washington Policy Center said the disconnect between producers and consumers is real and it’s sincere. And in the Evergreen State, that those consumers include policy makers.

“What we’re seeing with these pieces of legislation is you have people who live in these incredibly urban environments and they are sort of lecturing from their place where there is hardly a hint of the natural environment that they are purporting to want to defend and preserve.”

What will it take to bridge that divide? Lewison thinks there needs to be a continual, fact-based conversation.

“And I do think there is some culpability in media, or media outlets, in choosing to decide what constitutes a quote-unquote factual post or in not asking questions, not fostering that curiosity.”

Lewison added the farming community needs to be proactive, and it should be a position of teaching not a position of partisanship.

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