Promoting Ag Heritage

MARTIN: Lacy and I both grew up in small rural midwest towns. A vacation to us was a trip to the Badlands or in Lacy's case, Florida's Epcot center. We would never have considered attaching the "V-word" to a farm just outside of town.

GRAY: But that's exactly what a lot of city folk are doing these days and Colorado is looking at ways of taking advantage of that ag-tourism with Senate Bill 15-127. It's a bill that helps promote Colorado's agricultural heritage while at the same time helping Colorado's tourism industry.

MARTIN: SB 127 wants to accomplish this in two ways. First, the bill would allow private advertising or marketing agencies the ability to deduct from its federal taxable income for state income tax purposes an amount equal to 50 percent of advertising services donated to local governments with fewer than 120,000 residents in tax years 2016-2020. The second way is by providing an income tax credit of up to $500 to individuals to offset the costs of purchasing agritourism equipment.

GRAY: According to a USDA report, quote: Agritourism is increasingly recognized as a viable alternative enterprise for agriculture producers in many states, in order to make agritourism opportunities more available to agriculture producers, it will be necessary to provide additional resources so that producers can better maximize consumer participation.

MARTIN: And that's Colorado Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.