BROOMFIELD — Colorado Department of Agriculture Commissioner Kate Greenberg would not say how it felt to watch the first five wolves to arrive in Colorado for reintroduction leave their crates and lope across the snow-covered landscape in Grand County in December.
Not one facial expression, hand gesture or inadvertent emotion-revealing eye flick.
Instead, she stuck to the facts regarding the mission, her role in it and the agriculture commission’s partnership with Colorado Parks and Wildlife since both started working on reintroduction in 2020. “It was three years of planning to get to where we are now,” Greenberg said. “And over that time, there were tough questions for the agriculture commission to answer. But ultimately, the parks and wildlife commission voted on the wolf management plan unanimously. The question now is where do we go from here?”
That seems to be the question on many people’s minds when it comes to CPW’s delivery of Colorado’s newest non-human residents. But Minnesota-bred Greenberg, who fell in love with farming as a city-bred kid with ties to rural America, is juggling other equally crucial issues. There’s the federal Farm Bill, a little beat up but surviving through an extension that lasts until September; agriculture’s shift to green energy, which some farmers like and others hate; ranchers seeking guidance for how to deal with wolves if and when they discover their livestock; and something that visibly excites Greenberg — working to find, develop and invest in young farmers, so Colorado can continue to eat.
Greenberg spoke with The Colorado Sun about all of this and more on Jan. 9 from her office at Colorado Department of Agriculture HQ in Broomfield, with a view of the snow-frosted Flatirons out her giant window and artwork she won in an auction at the Monte Vista Crane Festival.
SUN: You say you loved farming as a kid even though you weren’t a “farm kid.” How did that work?
GREENBERG: I grew up both in the city and in the country, surrounded by agriculture, running through cornfields and going to friends’ dairies. But I never really thought agriculture was part of my future until a switch flipped when I was a student at Whitman College, and I started working on a farm in Walla Walla, Washington.
My undergrad was in environmental humanities, which involved looking at policy issues more from a human standpoint than a policy standpoint. After graduation, I ended up in Durango working for the National Young Farmers Coalition.
I thought I could just farm my whole life, but I realized that if you’re working in agriculture, you’re influenced by state, local and federal policies. So after seven years of working with the young farmers coalition, especially on Farm Bill policy, in 2018, when then-Congressman Polis was elected governor, I applied to be on his cabinet, and three weeks later, I was moving to Denver.
SUN: I was surprised to hear how involved your office has been with wolf reintroduction from the beginning. Can you explain your role?
GREENBERG: For a long time now, the commissioner of agriculture has had a nonvoting ex-officio seat on the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission, so I have been involved all throughout the ballot initiative and wolf management planning process. Two of my staff have also been at every technical working group meeting and stakeholder advisory group meeting. And the other element, of course, is I work with livestock producers every day in many capacities.
Ranching communities are built of tough, gritty folks who know how to get through change and challenging times. But we’re not asking them to adapt to this change alone. We want to make sure they know their state agencies are there alongside them, helping provide resources. That’s where CDA and CPW’s relationship is really going to be showing up in the field, supporting these communities and trying new things to minimize conflict and maximize opportunity for producers.
SUN: What funding sources support this?
GREENBERG: Two we’re very much focused on right now are a $2 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program Grant, through USDA (which funds solutions to natural resource challenges on agricultural land) and a budget request through CDA and the governor’s budget to add three full-time people to the CDA team. They’ll be out in the field with Parks and Wildlife, assisting in the implementation of nonlethal wolf management. The request has been submitted to the legislature, so we’ll do everything we can during the legislative session to get that passed.
Colorado now has one of the most, if not the most, aggressive compensation programs for depredations in any state, with compensation of up to $15,000 per animal as well as veterinary bills. And we have a multiplier because we don’t always find every kill. That doesn’t necessarily make up for the investment producers are needing to make up front in nonlethal management, but I think it does show a commitment by the Parks and Wildlife Commission and our state to say hey, we know ranchers are going to be coexisting and figuring this out. We want to put real money behind that compensation program.
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SUN: What’s going on with the 2023 — now 2024 — Farm Bill?
GREENBERG: The Farm Bill is the dominant piece of policy that drives agriculture in America. So while there are complications with the 2023 bill, we’re seeing more programs for young and beginning farmers. We’re seeing more programs for urban agriculture. And of course, the Farm Bill combines the nutrition title, which is paramount. There are a lot of people who feel this way and I hope that Congress remains true to their commitment to keep those titles together, because we have people who need to eat and people who grow food for all of us who do eat, and that’s all part of the same sort of policy package.
SUN: We’ve heard from a number of agriculture producers who feel the government is being too heavy handed in Colorado’s transition to green energy. What do you think?
GREENBERG: I think we approach it from a different angle, because we have farmers and ranchers coming to us saying, “Hey, we want to be part of the renewable energy transition; we just want to do it in a way that allows us to keep growing food.” And we just announced a half-million-dollar research investment into seven projects around the state that are going to advance agriculture, and they are all farmer-led.
There’s an amazing agrivoltaic operation in Longmont, Jack’s Solar Garden, that’s doing this at scale and they’re trialing both crop production and livestock production underneath the solar panels. Another research project we’re investing in are solar fence rows that allow farmers to get their equipment between the rows. So a farmer wouldn’t actually have to change the kind of equipment that they use if they want to integrate solar production.
And we’re working with the Colorado Water Conservation Board on an aquavoltaic grant, where you can actually install photovoltaic panels on open ditches or reservoirs, which helps reduce evaporation while generating solar. Those are examples of how we’re actually getting a lot of requests for ag to be part of the renewable energy transition and hitting (the state’s) goal of having 100% renewable energy by 2040.
SUN: Last question. What are you excited about?
GREENBERG: Well, we haven’t been able to bring down the average age of the farmer in the U.S. and Colorado, but I think we’re making some headway in terms of what it means to access the resources you need to enter into agriculture or to stay in it as the next generation.
We’re thinking of the continuum. So starting in middle school, kids from all over the state can get hands-on ag science education in our Animal Health Laboratory.
In the next phase, workforce development, we’ve created a paid apprenticeship program. You can get up to a year of experience on a farm or ranch and get paid for it.
And a big one last year was we launched a $20 million revolving loan fund, which is one of the most innovative flexible financing tools for beginning farmers on the market right now. We didn’t mean to be but we’re at better rates than even the Farm Services Agency. That’s huge because land access is the number one barrier young and beginning farmers face. If you’ve never owned a business, you don’t have equity, and getting access to a loan is very difficult. In the first year of the program, we’ve been able to lend to about 80 beginning farmers and ranchers.
The last two elements are succession planning and worker outreach. We have a goal of supporting 100 families this year before they start spending money on lawyers and CPAs in the succession process. And we’re focusing on worker outreach, because who knows who the folks are that are working for somebody else right now that might someday want to start their own farm, or get into agriculture in a new way.