Colorado Agriculture Investments Strengthen Local Supply Chain
In partnership with: Colorado Department of Agriculture
To keep the state’s agricultural supply chain strong and resilient, the state of Colorado, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many organizations are intentionally focusing on Colorado agriculture investments in small- and medium-sized producers.
“We’re still feeling a lot of changes in agriculture relative to the pandemic,” says Kate Greenberg, Colorado commissioner of agriculture. “There were a lot of supply chain crunches that impacted the industry and prices. It raised a lot of awareness on what resilience really means within our food system and pushed us to build on diversification.”
Greenberg, who is in her sixth year as commissioner, says she’s come to firmly believe in diversification as a critical tool to keep Colorado’s industry prepared for anything.
Colorado agriculture investments from grants and other types of funding for local, regional and value-added operations are crucial to diversification because they help maintain job stability, support all areas of the supply chain and expand opportunities for growth.
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Colorado Agriculture Investments
Audrey Gehlhausen of Billy Goat Hop Farm in Montrose is a direct recipient of this support. Gehlhausen and her partner, Chris DellaBianca, started their hop farm in February 2017.
It took about a year to produce an initial crop as they were busy building a 32-acre hops trellis system constructed of 2,300 poles and
57 miles of cable. They had their first harvest in 2018, a slightly bigger crop in 2019, then COVID-19 hit.
“It was really tough,” Gehlhausen says. “That March, we sold nothing. A lot of breweries that we supplied were closing and it was very difficult to navigate what resources were available to us as a business owner and farmer.”
Thankfully, a neighbor farmer told Gehlhausen about the Farm to Market Grant, a Colorado Department of Agriculture program funding processing projects.
“It was really exciting to find out about the grant because it specifically offered funds for equipment,” Gehlhausen says. “Hops involve a lot of processing, and the majority of all hops sold are pelletized, which makes them easier to store and last longer. In order to be competitive, we needed to pelletize our product.”
Billy Goat Hop Farm already had the basics for pelletizing hops but needed equipment that would make a better product with less labor. Gehlhausen was awarded $21,500, which they used to purchase a hammer mill, mixing tank and feed auger.
“Support from the CDA is huge,” Gehlhausen says. “Working with them on ideas that can be helpful for small farmers in the future and being able to get them implemented is amazing.”
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From Colorado and Beyond
Greenberg says CDA organized funding for small farmers before federal or state funding was established. During the pandemic, CARES Act funding helped the state move the needle on grants for processing.
“We now have the Farm to Market Grants and participate in helping producers apply for the UDSA’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure Program and Meat and Poultry Expansion Program,” Greenberg says. “In the food system, investing in a single business in a rural community can have a massive ripple effect that can benefit the community at large. We want to make sure we keep helping producers to scale sustainably.”
She adds that there’s a continuum of ongoing grants and resources at the state and federal level that producers can utilize such as the Colorado Agricultural Future Loan Program, which supports young and beginning farmers, as well as Colorado becoming one of the USDA’s Regional Food Business Centers, which will help grow and incubate agribusiness in the region.
“The more people we have at different scales operating successfully, the more resources we can connect,” Greenberg says. “We’re setting ourselves up to be as resilient as possible.”
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