What do you get when you bring together more than 30 ranchers, farmers, producers, and consumers from Montrose, Delta, and Mesa Counties to talk about the problems they face? On November 29, 2022, Western Colorado Alliance organizer Nick Allan was about to find out, as he gaveled the 2022 Western Colorado Alliance Agricultural Workshop into order.

In the past few years, the Alliance’s Local Food and Agriculture Committee has worked with local farmers and ranchers to achieve big victories for family farms in Western Colorado. In the past few years, they worked with state legislators and community leaders on both sides of the aisle to achieve the Cottage Foods Act and Animal Shares legislation, both of which make it possible for local growers and producers to sell locally.

Wanting some clarification on what local farmers and ranchers need the Alliance to work on for 2023 and the future, Nick and committee members Adriane Moline and Karen Rose organized the 2022 Western Colorado Alliance Agriculture Workshop. They contacted and invited as many ranchers, farmers, producers, and consumers from the Montrose, Delta, and Mesa County areas as they could to join them in the workshop and share their concerns, needs, and ideas for the farming community.

The workshop was a great success with about 30 local people joining us. We broke into groups and tried to narrow down our most serious concerns. There were a lot of suggestions, and everyone was very willing to present their ideas.

We also had a speaker, John Miller, the State Soil Health Program Coordinator, tell us about programs to aid farmers and ranchers in improving their productivity by improving their soils. This is a fairly new program, so they are still setting it up and figuring out financing support and programs that will most benefit Colorado farmers.

After his talk and lunch, we all gathered to discuss what our smaller groups thought was important. So many ideas! There was no way we could narrow it down and come up with a plan by the end of the workshop. But we had a lot of welcome input and scheduled several Zoom meetings for follow-up.
There was a lot of support for the phrase Nick used in his 2023 Local Food Operating Plan, (which is a compilation from the workshop and the Zoom meetings): “Local food feeding local people.” There was also a lot of concern for making local food available to lower-income people, and as outreach to young people “assisting the next generation of farmers.” Young farmers need help with getting access to resources and navigating government paperwork for starters.

The primary goals from all the feedback we received:

• Expand market access by building stronger relationships between producers and low-income consumers.
• Leverage resources to assist current and next-generation producers.
• Advocate for agricultural land protections.
• Meet with county commissioners in each county — Delta, Montrose, and Mesa.

Further discussion brought up that Proposition FF had passed in the November election, extending the Covid-era state rule giving all Colorado kids free lunch and encouraging the use of made-from-scratch meals using locally sourced food. We are hoping we can help financially, and provide training, equipment, and farmer access to help the schools actually prepare locally grown healthy food to feed all students.