Agriculture in Colorado under Trump’s presidency: Less conservation, more deregulation

Under the second Trump administration, two things are reasonably certain for agriculture: Federal support for conservation will end and there will be a focus on deregulation. 

“I think we’re going to see some defunding of conservation programs that are pretty popular, and deregulation, which can be good or bad depending on who you are and what you think,” said Tyler Garrett, director of government relations for the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, a grassroots organization of family farmers and ranchers in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming that calls itself “an issues-oriented lobby, not a sounding board for a political party.”

These could translate into less funding for research on things like how farmers and ranchers can integrate agrivoltaics into their operations, he said, and more consolidation of farms, “which is not good for family farmers or ranchers or, ultimately, the consumer, because it typically leads to higher prices in the market.”

President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t yet landed on whom he’ll choose for his secretary of agriculture, with around 15 options in the mix as of Nov. 13. But if the person he chooses follows guidelines in Project 2025, repeal of the Agriculture Risk Coverage program and the Price Loss Coverage program could be on tap, because, according to the doctrine, the programs double-pay producers for losses, when combined with Crop Loss Insurance.  

That could hobble smaller producers, especially if Trump fulfills his promise to impose huge tariffs “on everyone and, most detrimentally, Mexico and Japan,” said Larry Lempka, whose Los Rios Farm along the Little Thompson River in Larimer County has been in his family for more than 60 years. 

During his first administration, Trump “threw incredible amounts of money into USDA and back at the farmers,” Lempka added. “But they were all big farmers, big businesses. It wasn’t the little guy who got any of it. So it’s the people in power, the people with huge farms — and the Wall Street money buying up agriculture and equipment — that are going to benefit.” 

If bigger producers using bigger machinery enter the picture, we could see a move away from Colorado’s recent focus on regenerative farming. Lempka worries about how smaller-scale farmers, including those focused on rebuilding healthy soil, can be competitive and about how young farmers can enter the industry. Farmer mental health is also an issue, he said, with farm suicides three times higher than the general population, according to this study. 

One bright spot agriculture might see now that both chambers of Congress and the presidency are of the same party is the release of a new Farm Bill “sometime before next summer,” Garrett said. He says look to the House Republican version of the Farm Bill “for some of the guiding principles on what they’re going to go for.”

But Lempka said the new bill is riddled with problems. 

“It rewards big business and farmers, amplifies crop insurance for commodities, strips renewable energy and anything for climate change, kills small farm growth, will favor white males and expand their reach, will favor the few meatpackers and reduce safety in food and production, and it cuts conservation unless it can work for large scale growers,” he said.

Perhaps the biggest question when it comes to agriculture is what will happen to the nearly half of hired crop farmworkers the USDA has said lack legal immigration status, amid Trump’s threats of mass deportation. 

Stephen Miller, who Trump named as his White House deputy chief of staff for policy, has said Americans will be able to take the jobs deportees leave vacant and receive higher wages, Garrett said. “But we’ve seen it before that when we have labor shortages, they’re not filled by Americans, especially in the agriculture industry. So what happens is we’ll have more big machinery taking some of these positions or things along those lines.”

Lempka said he is already seeing the fallout of Trump’s threatened immigration policies. 

“I’ve already had one promising employee say, ‘I’d love to work for you, but my family’s been harassed in the past. We’re just going to move to Mexico in December.’ 

“So I foresee a huge change in the labor force. It’s already bad. We can’t get help as it is, and people that were willing to do some of the work that we have, they’re just going to turn tail and hide until the storm goes away.”