The High Plains of Eastern Colorado is an unforgiving place to farm. Most farmers in the region practice dryland farming, relying only on rainfall and using no irrigation whatsoever. Here climate disruption is felt keenly — there is no backup water to tap into when the rains don’t come. Many farmers worry about the disrupted […]
Farm Bill
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, News
Greeley still shuns marijuana, but it’s starting to embrace hemp as a new cash crop
Five years ago, Clifford Clift would have been disgusted by the fragrant plants growing in his backyard. That’s the devil’s weed, he would have said through gritted teeth, probably with some dad joke about how the world was going to pot now that his state was legalizing marijuana. Now Clift, at 79, plants 7 acres […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Politics and Government
Hemp has arrived: Colorado crops double after Farm Bill makes growing more legit
Entrepreneur Joey Coleman is enthusiastically prepping for a 40-acre “farm-to-doorstep” crop of hemp he plans to grow near Grand Junction this spring. In Monte Vista, Corbett Hefner has added an industrial hemp harvester to his heavy-equipment product line. Colorado State University-Pueblo chemistry professor Chad Kinney is preparing to host around 500 researchers from around the […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Growing hemp means growing economic opportunity in rural Colorado
In 2013, I received a call from now Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell asking me, as a member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, to support a pilot program to allow farmers to grow hemp. Knowing Colorado farmers’ interest in the crop, I jumped at the chance and pushed to include the program in the 2014 […]