Springfield – Hundreds of southeastern Colorado ranchers – many arriving with muddy boots and tired faces – packed a small community center Sunday to plead with state and federal officials to provide some kind of direct assistance to offset a winter of punishing weather and catastrophic losses.
“This is pretty close to home,” said rancher Curtis Foos, who estimated he has lost more than 250 calves and cattle. “Raising cattle is our livelihood. The experience the last two months that everybody in this room has had is going to be something we’ll be talking about for the rest of our lives.”
Ranchers and farmers in 10 counties on the Eastern Plains have yet to receive any state or federal financial assistance to help them recover from a brutal winter that began with a December storm that left drifts up to 15 feet high, stranding cattle. Counties got money for snow removal, but farmers are not yet being compensated for losses.
This month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture denied disaster relief because the losses did not meet its threshold of 30 percent of production. State Farm Service Agency executive director Lewis Frank, whose office is making the case for federal disaster assistance, said there is no good way to tell what the true losses are.
“For the county areas here, it’s just the best guess,” he said. “We don’t have any reporting mechanism for losses.”
His office is now trying to get federal assistance in a different way, he said.
The Baca County Conservation District organized Sunday’s “listening session” so that ranchers could tell a panel of state and federal officials – including representatives of U.S. Sens. Wayne Allard and Ken Salazar – about their difficulties and frustrations.
“It isn’t that we need a handout every time something comes along,” said Ryan Bulkley, whose family owns a ranch in northwest Baca County. “This was a once-in-a-lifetime storm event for us, and it is going to take our profit for several years just to recover.”
Officials said about 3,500 cattle died during the storm, but the winter’s true toll has yet to be calculated.
“Nobody has a solid handle on what the losses are,” said Colorado Agricultural Commissioner John Stulp, “but they’re probably higher than what anybody has talked about.”
The ranchers said feed costs have gone up, equipment and snow-removal bills have mounted and animal weights – and thus the price the animals fetch at market – have dropped.
When Baca County Conservation District manager Misty George asked how many people had had to plow themselves out of their property 10 or more times this winter, almost every hand in the room went up.
“There are so many additional expenses that everybody has incurred,” she said.
Foos, who owns a ranch in Baca County, said he has probably suffered about $300,000 in losses. Others estimated their losses at $100,000 or more.
“I think you could easily say that it’s a $50 to $100 million loss,” Stulp said. “And we’re not out of winter yet.”
Rancher Lyman Edgar, at 93 the dean of southeastern Colorado ranching, said he hopes the help doesn’t come too late.
“It will be interesting to know,” he said, “how many people who are here now will still be here five years from now.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
