The Business Incubator Center recently commissioned a study of the Economic Impact of Agriculture on the Western Slope. The study was done by Colorado Mesa University Davis School of Business Economics Professor Dr. Nathan Perry, and focused on Garfield, Mesa, Rio Blanco, Delta and Montrose Counties. Dr. Perry says the study also included a census and surveys, and studied agriculture trends over time.
Dr. Perry: And here's what we found. So on the economic impact side, we found the AG contributes about 5% of jobs to the region. On the survey side, we found two primary issues. First, agriculture on the Western Slope is facing a very severe succession issue. A very large percentage of AG producers don't know who's going to take over their farm, and the producers in AG are aging rapidly. The other thing that we learned that we found is that drought is a huge issue especially for cattle. So crop sales have generally stayed pretty consistent, but is what we've seen is cattle sales have dropped due to drought. So we see succession and drought as the two primary issues that we got from the survey, from the AG census data.
We found a lot of trends. We found that crop production seems to be extremely stable and not volatile and anchors AG in the industry, whereas livestock seems to be very drought sensitive and highly volatile. We saw this with the recent spell of drought the last five years hurting livestock in 2022. And I'd say those are the main results.
KDNK: And what are the big takeaways moving forward here with this data?
Dr. Perry: Well, as what we're trying to do is we're trying to show, listen, AG contributes to this region. And it doesn't just contribute in terms of direct economic impact, but there's these indirect economic impacts.
You know, people move to the Western slope and want to live here because of AG, and if these farms and this agriculture production disappear, the Western slope loses a lot of its legacy and charm. And so the idea is how can we help farms or how can we raise awareness for farms and ranches to enhance their income so we can maintain what I think is a legacy industry and an important one for view sheds and for the character of the region. You know, we want to help monetize and then we want to help create side businesses for agriculture to maintain this legacy industry.
KDNK: So it's a five county area, you studied, each of these counties is pretty unique in their own ways. How would you say that Garfield County kind of stood out from the other, from the other ones?
Dr. Perry: So Garfield has more of, it has a higher concentration of big ranchers. So that's the first thing is when you look at someplace like Mesa, there's a lot of hobby farms and a couple of big AG producers, but Garfield has some really big AG producers that are doing most of the output.
The second is that Garfield is anchored in pasture and hay, and it also has a higher average farm size than the rest of the counties. And then the big shift, and this is the case with a lot of counties, but especially with Garfield because there's a lot of cattle, but we saw a big drop in cattle from 2017 to 2022, uh, due to drought.
KDNK: Were there any surprises in this data that you really weren't expecting as you were compiling all this?
Dr. Perry: I knew succession was an issue, but I think when I actually saw the data, it really hit how big of an issue it is. With the age of AG of producers, you know, it, it set off some alarm bells.
And then doing this study, I really thought about what is the value that AG brings? So I measured the economic impact, but I started really thinking deeply on, what are these intangible economic impacts? People are here for a variety of reasons. They could live and get jobs in Denver. You know, that's something that almost everyone can do, but there's a character and a charm and a lifestyle that comes being AG or AG adjacent. And even when you live in a place like Glenwood Springs or Grand Junction that you know, feels like a town or a city, you're AG adjacent and you get the view sheds and you get the farmer's markets and you get these things that make the Western Slope special.
And so I'd say one of the big conclusions from this is that if we don't find ways to keep these farms going, if it becomes uneconomical to keep these farms going because of increasing land prices and the difficulty making income on the farms, you know, it's not just the AG producers that it's going to lose.
It's going to be all of us that live here that will lose. And that I think was one of my big conclusions from the report. We take it all for granted but everything is affected by economics. And if the economics don't work. Those beautiful fields that you're used to driving by go away. And I think that's kind of the point of this, you know, how do we keep that going?
That was KDNK’s Mike Lemmer speaking with Colorado Mesa University Economics Professor Dr. Nathan Perry. The full 45-page Western Slope Agriculture Impact Study is available on the Business Incubator Center website at gjincubator.org.
