A first-of-its kind regional study on the state of the Western Slope’s agricultural industry confirmed the magnitude of two issues that have long kept local producers up at night: succession planning and droughts.
The project was a collaboration between the Business Incubator Center and the Colorado Mesa University School of Business, and involved a combination of economic modeling with findings from the nationwide five-year Agricultural Census, as well as a custom-made survey of farmers and ranchers in Mesa, Monroe, Delta, Garfield and Rio Blanco counties. Its findings were presented Monday night at the incubator center by Nathan Perry, an economics professor at CMU who conducted the study.
On the matter of succession, Perry reported that more than half (52.9%) of the region’s farmers and ranchers fall between the ages of 35 and 64, while nearly 40% are 65 or older. When a survey…
