Ideas. Stories. Community.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Farm News & Views for the week of January 27th, 2025

Ways To Subscribe

As we close out January, the Colorado snowpack is a bit of a mixed bag according to the National Resource Conservation Service SNOTEL Snowpack Update Report for Colorado. While the South Platte River Basin snowpack is 104% of normal, and the Upper Colorado River Basin sets at 98% of normal, and the rest of the Colorado River Basins have lower snowpacks then are these two basins. In southwest Colorado, the snowpack has a ways to go before reaching 100%. For example, the San Miguel, Dolores, Animas and San Juan River basins are 69% of normal. Further east, the Rio Grande River Basin is 73% of normal, which could affect water supplies for farmers down the length of the river. So once again, let it snow, let it snow!

President Trump's threat of imposing tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods would likely have severe negative impacts for both countries' agricultural industries, with the possibility of sending both the Canadian and Mexican economies into a recession, according to many economists. They point out that Agricultural trade between Canada, the U.S and Mexico is significant. According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in 2023, Canada sent more than $40 billion of agricultural goods to the U.S., which included beef, pork and canola oil, while Canada is the No. 2 market for U.S. agricultural exports, with sales worth $28.4 billion in 2023. Mexico is the largest single source of U.S. horticultural imports. In 2023, Mexico supplied 63 percent of U.S. vegetable imports and 47 percent of U.S. fruit and nut imports. They also sent the U.S. over 680 metric tons of fresh chilled and frozen beef and 2 million head of live cattle. Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, a global business services company. Stated, “This would be a real trade war, not a trade skirmish. This is serious. You would see job loss and people lose their homes. That’s why some people on Wall Street believe Trump is bluffing. Investors are not dumping stocks. CEOs are not panicking. Economists have not dimmed their growth forecasts.”

Some agricultural organizations are calling for restraints on the imposition of tariffs. The American Farm Bureau is calling for the Trump Administration to negotiate rather than to implement a “bunch” of tariffs. They point out that exports generate about 20 cents of each dollar that farmers receive for sales of their crops and livestock. The Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture found in their recent monthly poll of producers that about 40% of them think that a trade war is likely or very likely.

Although we seldom see a Monarch Butterfly in the Four Corners Region, the insect is known for its  continent-spanning migration, and is found in every U.S. state except Alaska. But these insects face a number of threats, from extreme weather, pesticides, habitat loss and fragmentation in both the U.S. and Mexico where they over winter, which puts them at risk of going extinct. Monarchs in the West have declined by 99% since the 1980s, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has proposed to list them as threatened with extinction. The proposal is supported by the American Farm Bureau and National Corn Growers Association, with both groups offering to provide input on how the Monarchs can be protected without disrupting critical agricultural practices.

American Humorist Will Rogers wrote, “The short memories of American voters is what keeps our politicians in office.”

Bob has been an agricultural educator and farm and ranch management consultant for over 40 years in southwest Colorado. He writes about agricultural issues from his farm near Cortez, and has helped to produce farm reports on KSJD for more than a dozen years.