{"id":100928,"date":"2018-03-16T17:22:43","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T23:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-ag-commissioner-don-brown-visits-ag-expo\/"},"modified":"2018-03-16T17:22:43","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T23:22:43","slug":"colorado-ag-commissioner-don-brown-visits-ag-expo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-ag-commissioner-don-brown-visits-ag-expo\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado Ag Commissioner Don Brown visits Ag Expo"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Colorado
Colorado Agriculture Commissioner Don Brown addresses farmers at the Four States Ag Expo.<\/span>Stephanie Alderton\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Montezuma County got a visit from Colorado Commissioner of Agriculture Don Brown during the opening of the Four States Ag Expo on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Brown, a farmer from Yuma County, has led the state Department of Agriculture<\/a> since his appointment by Gov. John Hickenlooper in 2015. He spoke about a wide variety of issues facing farmers on the Western Slope and across the state and pledged his commitment to represent rural communities in the state capital. Afterward, the handful of people who attended his session discussed legislation that affects farmers, such as the Food Safety and Modernization Act.<\/p>\n

Brown said one of his top priorities is correcting the perceptions many lawmakers on the Front Range have of farmers and ranchers in the rest of the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just don\u2019t think about us,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not angry with us, they\u2019re not upset with us \u2026 they just don\u2019t know about us.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he tries to encourage lawmakers to consider the cost of legislation that places more restrictions on farmers, such as limiting genetically modified organisms in food. Those extra rules can raise the cost of doing business for farmers, resulting in higher prices for consumers, he said. He voiced concerns about the U.S. Food Safety and Modernization Act, passed in 2011, which placed numerous regulations on the food industry in an effort to reduce food-borne illness.<\/p>\n

Brown said he worries those regulations will make it increasingly hard for American farmers to compete with cheaper foreign imports.<\/p>\n

Brown brought up several other problems in Colorado\u2019s food industry, such as lower commodity prices, looming drought and shrinking farmland. Colorado has lost about 20 percent of its farmland since 1959, he said, whether to urban sprawl, federal designation or other causes.<\/p>\n

It was because of those problems, Brown said, that he helped spearhead the creation of a program to train Colorado Crisis Services hotline operators on how to talk with farmers about mental health.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was concerned that when you call this crisis hotline, that you\u2019ll get somebody that doesn\u2019t speak the foreign language of agriculture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The training program was produced by the Department of Agriculture, the Colorado State University Extension, the Colorado Farm Bureau and the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. Organizations such as the CSU Extension office in Montezuma County have been advertising it for several months.<\/p>\n

Brown also spent much of his time talking about the positive aspects of agriculture in Colorado, especially on the Western Slope, where he praised farmers for raising crops in a \u201cstate of extremes,\u201d between dry desert conditions and severe winter weather. He also praised Hickenlooper for listening to farmers\u2019 concerns during his tenure with the Agriculture Department.<\/p>\n

After Brown\u2019s presentation, he discussed some of his points in more detail with the audience. Eric Favier, a peach farmer from Palisade, said he had written a book of guidelines<\/a> for farmers who want to comply with the new FSMA rules, and asked for Brown\u2019s help in advertising it. Brown said he couldn\u2019t commit to anything immediately, but that he would follow up with Favier on the idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuma County discusses economic challenges<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[281,94,21,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-agriculture","tag-colorado-state-government","tag-cortez","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100928"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100928\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100928"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}