Colorado Farmers Are Under Pressure From All Sides

Bruce Finley’s piece in The Denver Post lays out what too many people under the Gold Dome and behind agency desks treat like an abstraction. Colorado agriculture is getting squeezed from every side at once. The article focuses on farmers across the state, especially in Pueblo, Olathe, and Palisade, who are cutting acreage, changing crops, or wondering whether planting at all is worth the gamble this year.

Finley reports that a record-warm, dry spring, weak snowpack, low reservoir levels, high diesel and fertilizer costs, labor uncertainty, and supply chain headaches are all crashing into one another at the same time. Farmers quoted in the story are not whining. They are doing math. And the math is ugly. When guys who have farmed for generations start saying they may leave hundreds of acres unplanted or that this may be the year they “turn in our gloves,” that is not a mood swing. That is a warning flare.

The article also includes the now-standard line from Governor Jared Polis that government cannot make it rain or snow, which is true enough as far as it goes. But that is also a pretty convenient place to stop talking when state and federal policy choices are making everything else more expensive, more regulated, and more uncertain for the people still trying to grow food in this state.

The Bullet Point Brief

Colorado farmers are getting hammered by drought first. The article says low snowpack, dry soil, and thin reservoir levels are putting water scarcity at the center of the crisis. Kind of tough to grow chile, corn, and peaches on speeches and hashtags.
Farmers are cutting back hard. One grower near Avondale is leaving 750 of 1,000 acres unplanted. Olathe sweet corn acreage is being slashed. Pueblo chile growers are talking about trimming planting to 60% to 75% of normal. That is not belt-tightening. That is survival mode.
Input costs are chewing these folks alive. Diesel spiked, fertilizer costs climbed, transportation is a mess, and needed equipment and irrigation parts are harder to get. Amazing how food does not get cheaper after politicians and international chaos light the whole supply chain on fire.
Labor uncertainty is another punch to the ribs. The story reports fear among workers and problems tied to immigration enforcement and state limits on hours for seasonal foreign workers. Because apparently the modern governing model is to make sure nobody can find enough help while also pretending groceries come from the back room at Safeway.
The real gut punch is what comes next. Less planting means less Colorado-grown food in stores and higher prices for families. And when that happens, let us be very clear, it will not be because the farmer suddenly got greedy. It will be because everything around him got more expensive, more political, and dumber.

My Bottom Line

This article gets something important right. The Colorado farmer is not asking for applause. He is asking for a fighting chance. What he is getting instead is drought, insane input costs, labor headaches, and a political class that loves local food right up until the moment it has to defend the people who actually produce it.

Yes, water is a real problem. Anybody with eyes and a windshield can see that. But Governor Gaslight and the rest of the performative ruling class want to dump this whole mess into the catch-all bucket of “climate change” and move on. Convenient. Very convenient. That lets them skip right past the parts where bad energy policy drives up fuel and fertilizer costs, where labor rules make it harder to keep farms running, and where rural Colorado gets treated like an outdated inconvenience by people who think produce begins at the grocery store.

And here is the part city politicians never seem to grasp. The farmer eats the risk first, but everybody else gets the bill eventually. Fewer acres planted. Less local supply. Higher prices at the store. Smaller margins for families already stretched thin. That is how this works. You can lecture a farmer about climate, sustainability, and equity all day long. None of it irrigates a field. None of it fills a diesel tank. None of it pays a hand.

So yes, pray for the Colorado farmer. Mean it, too. Pray for rain. Pray for relief. Pray for some sanity in a state government that too often treats agriculture like a prop at fair season and a nuisance the rest of the year. Because if we keep working against the people who feed us, we are going to wind up with fewer farms, pricier groceries, and a whole lot of very surprised suburbanites staring at the produce aisle like this just happened by magic.

Source: The Denver Post