Leadership Quote by Rick Larsen

Larsen is doing the most political thing possible: translating dirt-and-vines agriculture into a clean civic story about jobs, competitiveness, and public return on investment. The sentence is structured like a grant pitch and a campaign mailer had a mutually beneficial child. First, he establishes the district as strategically important, not quaint: a "major producer" of raspberries and strawberries turns local identity into economic leverage. Then he points to a "research center" as the quiet hero, a stand-in for federal dollars, land-grant expertise, and the infrastructure of modern farming that voters rarely see but often depend on.

The key word is "marketability". Yield and quality are agronomic concerns; marketability is political code for survival in an economy where farmers compete against imported fruit, volatile prices, labor shortages, and increasingly punishing weather. By bundling quality, yield, and marketability, Larsen frames research not as academic curiosity but as a tool for risk management and regional stability. He is implicitly arguing: if you care about food prices, rural employment, and keeping farms in business, you should care about this center.

Context matters. As a sitting member of Congress representing the district, he is signaling alignment with growers and the institutions that serve them, while also justifying public spending in a way that plays well across party lines. The subtext is coalition-building: farmers hear advocacy, researchers hear validation, and constituents hear a promise that government can be practical rather than performative.