Our livelihood is deeply rooted in sustainable land management. That’s why our ag producers are conservation leaders.
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Posted inBusiness, Economy, News
Farmers hit with most disruptive price hikes, supply shortages in decades as pandemic slowdowns catch up to Colorado
From being nestled under soil, piled into trucks, sent down conveyor belts and driven on to Walmart, Kroger and Aldi stores, the potatoes from Reid Mattive’s San Luis Valley farm have never been more expensive to grow. Tires and machinery are hard to locate. The prices for fertilizer, fuel and fungicides are spiking. Mattive, a […]
Posted inClimate, Environment, News, Water
Farmers on Rio Grande in New Mexico face early water cutoff for second straight year
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Hundreds of farmers along central New Mexico’s stretch of the Rio Grande face a second straight year of having their irrigation supplies cut off early. The board that oversees the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District voted Friday to end deliveries for irrigation a month early because of low water availability. The Oct. […]
Posted inNews, Politics and Government
Colorado agricultural workers will get expanded rights, more pay. Here are the details.
Colorado lawmakers have approved a major expansion of labor rights for the state’s nearly 40,000 agricultural workers through a measure Gov. Jared Polis appears eager to sign. Senate Bill 87 would give farm workers the right to organize or join labor unions, earn state minimum wage and overtime pay. It would also protect workers and […]
Posted inClimate, News
Colorado restaurants are funding farming and ranching projects that suck carbon from the atmosphere
By Michael Elizabeth Sakas, Colorado Public Radio On an early weekday morning in Longmont, the co-owners of the boutique catering company Whistling Boar are busy in the kitchen getting their weekly meal boxes ready for delivery. David Pitula and Debbie Seaford-Pitula moved to Colorado from Brooklyn five years ago with dreams of living closer to […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Amid COVID-19, Colorado needs its farmers markets more than ever
Over the last year, we’ve seen many news stories that reported product shortages at U.S. grocery stores due to COVID-19. The pandemic hit the industrial food system hard. Protecting workers meant trucks didn’t move, distribution facilities went unmanned, and farm workers couldn’t harvest crops. Outbreaks at animal processing plants, where workers stand elbow-to-elbow, resulted in […]
Posted inBusiness, News, Technology
Gigabit internet coming to more rural southwestern Colorado communities
Bit by bit, southwestern Colorado is cobbling together fiber-fast broadband service to get its residents up to speed, or at least to 2015 internet standards, when the Federal Communications Commission updated its benchmark to 25 megabits down and 3 Mbps up. The latest bit came this week as three Colorado counties learned that Utah-based Emery […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, News
Food grown for research once rotted in Colorado fields. Now, it’s feeding the hungry
GRAND JUNCTION — On a cloudy, mid-July morning, a small group of volunteers began picking more than a ton of watermelons, 330 pounds of cucumbers and roughly 25 pounds of tomatoes on land that for decades has been used to research crop varieties, increase yields and control pests and diseases. Not so long ago, some […]
Posted inOpinion, Opinion Columns
Opinion: Colorado’s farm-to-table capital is under threat from drilling
A Saturday morning stroll through your local farmers market, is there anything like it? It’s a popular way that many Front Range people decide to spend their weekends, where you get to peruse the abundance and score some of the best food you can buy. They fill their baskets with organically grown produce, chat with […]
Posted inBusiness, COVID, News
How the closure of two Vail restaurants shows coronavirus’ domino effect on the food-service economy
EDWARDS — The cows are calving, and of course they come during a surprise blizzard. “That one there about froze to the ground last night,” says Mike Eaton, pointing to a calf huddling in the mud beneath his mother’s hooves as the morning sun melts spring snow. Eaton is dumping fresh hay on a trailer […]