Amid the challenges, hopeful spots for agriculture

Agriculture in Colorado can be in a state of challenging realities. Like all spots on terrestrial earth, we are surrounded by abundant nitrogen in the air, but we are unable to get this essential nutrient to crops without significant human intervention. Some 70% of the snowpack melts out in 90 days, leaving farmers on the semi-arid plains in search of water from rivers, creeks, aquifers and the sky to replenish soil moisture. Many Coloradans enthusiastically demand local food, yet county, state and national policies and laws make supplying this thirst harder for farmers and ranchers than it would seem. We can't control precipitation yet and nitrogen solutions exist. What about the policy challenges?

Boulder County Community Planning and Permitting (CPP) now provides additional land use code provisions to better support local farmers and ranchers. It's verified established farm use (VEFU) designation is awarded to farms that provide evidence showing their principle use is commercial agriculture. VEFU status both streamlines permitting through CPP and creates additional use by right provisions. In addition to VEFU, CPP expanded as use-by-right demonstration farms or farm camps, added educational tours, expanded farm events, simplified farm sales regulations, and created tailored regulations for season-extending agricultural structures.

Senate Bill 87, Concerning Agricultural Workers' Rights, was introduced in the Colorado legislature with no feedback from key agricultural groups in Colorado. One key provision in the current draft is an immediate removal of the ag exemption for overtime pay. Farms and ranches in Colorado have work periods related to the production and harvest of crops and livestock that are difficult to limit to an 8-hour work day (think time-crunched field and livestock before a rainy, snowy, hot or cold period; overlapping tasks of weeding, planting, harvesting, marketing, etc.).

A recent CSU survey, Colorado Agricultural Labor Survey for Employers, reported 55% of Colorado farm and ranch employers (271 responding) are struggling to remain profitable with the wages they are paying with 52% paying $13-$17 per hour for entry level workers. Sixty-four percent noted their level of business risk recruiting and retaining qualified ag labor is a moderate to extremely high risk. Twenty-three percent will reduce or cease the production of labor-intensive ag products if labor supply issues do not improve.

The US has a long history of hard-won reforms for ag workers. Farmers are emerging from Covid business pivots to a year that may deliver more drought and reduce irrigation water supply. Covid has shown us that food and ag workers are incredibly essential. What is the right thing to do? One ag group has proposed that overtime pay starts when worker hours exceed the normal 2080 full time hours per year.

Ag workforce is stymied by low interest from US workers for ag jobs, by undocumented ag workers – a vast majority of the US domestic ag workforce, living in fear of deportation and unable to claim a full life in the US due to this fear – and the rising cost to farmers and ranchers of using the H-2A temporary international ag worker program. The recently reintroduced House Bill 1537, the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, attempts to address a pathway to citizenship and H-2A reforms. Immigration issues are a third rail now in US politics, yet this bill is one to track as it brings together a diverse coalition around the issues of both a viable farm workforce and farmworker rights.

With most Americans generations-removed from production agriculture, it is easy to believe that US agriculture will weather all storms and local food will always be available, yet the business threats to Colorado farms and ranches still make this essential occupation a tenuous one.