AGRICULTURE
Our Perspective
Colorado’s history is grounded in agriculture and the open lands and magnificent vistas it provides. The members of the Colorado Forum believe that maintaining a strong agricultural sector is critical to maintaining the economic viability of our State. Colorado agriculture (livestock ranching, crop farming, and everything in between) contributes almost $50 billion to the State’s economy and enables local communities throughout Colorado to thrive. The Colorado Forum is committed to providing a non-vested voice for Colorado’s agriculture community as it navigates the ongoing challenges of a historic 20+ year drought, demand for water from rapidly growing urban municipalities, ever-present marketplace and weather volatility, and declining interest in younger generations in committing to the farm/ranch life. We would like to help preserve the ability of Colorado farms and ranches of all sizes to compete and thrive and to provide pathways for younger Coloradans to realize that a farm/ranch life, for all its hard work, can still provide a robust economic career and an extraordinarily rewarding lifestyle.
Our Work
The Colorado Forum works in close concert with our State Legislators and our State University partners to explore creative legislative, marketplace, and cultural solutions to better support the State’s agricultural sector. We have helped to explore legislative mechanisms the State could pursue to counter outside efforts by financial investors to buy and reclassify agricultural water rights. While respecting the right of individual farmers and ranchers to sell their water rights, the Forum is also sensitive to the negative “buy and dry” phenomenon that rural communities face when their local tax base dries up with the no longer fertile ag lands. Additionally, The Colorado Forum supports efforts to create regional/local/private meatpacking facilities and more vertically integrated distribution methods. These would allow livestock ranchers to realize more profit rather than surrendering that profit to monopoly meatpacking behemoths. We will continue to support these and other creative, forward-thinking methods to preserve this critical sector of our State’s economy.