Census: Colorado Bucks National Trend

Census: Colorado Bucks National Trend

Maura Bennett
Maura Bennett
Innovation and a population boom are two possible reasons why Colorado bucked the national trend in terms of number of farms in the new ag census.

According to the 2017 Census of Agriculture, Colorado added farms while the numbers fell nationally.

Bill Meyer at the National Agricultural Statistics Service in Lakewood explained some of the findings.

Were estimating now there are 38,900 thousand farms and that's compared to 36,200 last time. And again those farms are in the very small size category. In the Denver metro area there has been a lot of activity. Local foods, there's a lot of interest in that. And so we've seen a lot of small vegetable farms, small livestock farms and so our number did go up quite a bit from last time.

Meyer points to qualify as a farm there only has to be 1000.00 dollars worth of sales in a year or in a normally year. He says a producer with one beef cow and calf will cover that amount in a year. Similarly small plot farmers are popping up as interest in local and organic foods has risen.

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