New survey documents Boulder County agricultural constraints

Farming and ranching in the urban interface has unique challenges and opportunities. Boulder County, with roughly one-third of its 740 square miles (157,000 acres of 470,000 acres) on the plains, is home to 330,758 people and 107,043 acres of farms and ranches.

This population density is buffered by both land use policies that contain the growth of cities and prevent unincorporated lands from being subdivided into parcels smaller than 35 acres, and by progressive land conservation programs by Boulder County and the cities of Boulder and Longmont that have preserved agricultural lands.

Because these buffers have protected open spaces and viewsheds, agriculture here still exists within an intersection of mostly urban values.

While many county residents deeply appreciate local food, most are unaware of the challenges farmers and ranchers struggle through and the existential threats they face to produce local food.

You might guess a few that overlap with challenges other economic sectors encounter, such as housing, but others are very specific to agriculture.

A team composed of CSU Extension, Boulder County Parks and Open Space plus Community Planning and Permitting, and City of Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks recently set out to better understand these business constraints and explore solutions to them.

After input from key farmer and rancher informants, a survey was released to Boulder County farmers and ranchers in the fall of 2021 asking them to rank constraints to their farm or ranch business. Fifty-seven responses were received.

From this ranking a more detailed survey was developed with input from key local ag organizations with the intention of understanding why these are business constraints, how they have impacted the respondent's farm or ranch, and what solutions might be viable.

This second survey was released mid-January through mid-February 2022. Four respondent categories were created, three by economic class of total farm or ranch sales and the other as beginning farmer or rancher (0 – 10 years operating an ag business). Here are a few preliminary insights prior to a full report being released this spring.

The top business constraints across all respondent categories: Business growth constrained by local policies and/or state public policies and/or lack of ag knowledge with policy makers. Farming in the urban interface can often place the values of non-farm residents before those of farmers and ranchers. We only need to look further east to Weld and Adams counties, into their unincorporated areas, to see more "ag friendly" business environments.

Two solutions were ranked highest in the second survey. The first regards stating a clear policy priority for production of food on agricultural lands as a core solution. The second addresses the lack of ag knowledge among policy makers by using public funds to develop organized tours of local farms and ranches for elected officials and their relevant staff.

The first values-based solution mirrors what Weld and other Colorado counties offer to the ag sector, a "right to farm" regulation, clearly giving a priority to residents of working lands when they appear to be in conflict with non-farm residents. This is typically standard in many agricultural areas of Colorado but has never been done in Boulder County, although its agricultural roots are the foundation of current county economic prosperity. Doing so levels the playing field when farmers count for less than one percent of the county population.

The second solution addresses the standard policy conundrum: how can public sector staff make appropriate policy, some of which is not part of a public process, when subject matter knowledge is insufficient to take into account all factors? It aligns with the first solution, so that when staff are knowledgeable, there is an "ag friendly" policy that supports their decision making.

If Boulder County agriculture is to flourish in the future, a reckoning must be had regarding the values at play in a predominantly urban county.