Farmers follow the sun, not the clock

One of the biggest misconceptions about Daylight Saving Time is that farmers pushed for it, because “they needed daylight hours to work in their fields”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The adoption of daylight saving time in the United States through the Calder Act, also known as the Standard Time Act of 1918, was devised to conserve energy during wartime. Even then, the agriculture industry spoke out against it. Here’s why:

Shifting the clocks back and forth is hugely disruptive for our farmers and ranchers, not to mention any livestock they keep. Do you think a dairy cow knows what time it is? If a dairy cow is used to getting milked at 5 in the morning, she’s not going to understand why she’s suddenly getting milked earlier when spring rolls around, or later (which can be quite uncomfortable) in the fall. It throws her production off entirely. To top it off, the milk truck is still going to follow the clock, because that’s how distributors operate. So, dairy farmers don’t even have the option to change their milking times to keep it consistent for their livestock.

Similarly, daylight saving time also affects the amount of time put in by farmworkers. If farmworkers have to wait an extra hour for daylight to start working in the morning, but they still leave at the same time at night, then less work is getting done. This doesn’t just hurt our farmers; it hurts everyone up and down the food supply chain.

Simply put, farmers rely on the sun to determine their schedule, not their clocks. And switching back and forth only makes it harder for them to do the important work of feeding our nation.

It's far past “time” we get rid of this outdated process, and in fact, states across the country have repeatedly introduced legislation to stop the shifting of our clocks. Even our own Washington state passed legislation to do so. And just last week, the Senate moved to unanimously pass the Sunshine Protection Act which would make Daylight Saving Time the permanent standard time. This is a major step forward in the movement to stop changing our clocks back and forth and provide certainty for our farmers, and Americans, across the country and I am optimistic that this will prompt important discussions about which time we should adopt as a country.

It's really straightforward: Let’s stop shifting our clocks and stop this nonsense once and for all.