Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) announced today that it will coordinate Farm Bill workshops in rural Colorado and New Mexico, beginning with a meeting in Alamosa, Colo., on August 19.

RMFU President Kent Peppler, a Mead, Colo., farmer, said, “The so-called ‘Farm Bill’ is 700 pages of legislation on food, energy, conservation, and rural community programs. It took two years to reach compromises that protect our food and energy security without hurting the environment or breaking the budget. This bill impacts everyone, not just farming and ranching families. Nearly two-thirds of the funding goes to nutrition, conservation, and energy programs, but it also addresses specific interests of food, fuel and fiber producers and rural communities. It addresses many issues that are important in the Rocky Mountain region. We are pleased that we have been able to build a team of experts who can help rural families understand how the bill affects them.”

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union has put together a group of speakers that includes experts from farm and commodity groups, conservation organizations, rural banking and crop insurance. The workshops will include brief presentations and in-depth question-and-answer sessions. National Farmers Union President Tom Buis will be the keynote speaker.

Other speakers will be drawn from the many sponsoring organizations. The following organizations will participate: Colorado Sugarbeet Growers Association, Colorado Association of Conservation Districts, Independent Bankers of Colorado, Colorado Potato Commission, Colorado Certified Potato Growers Association, county Farmers Union officers, and local Farmers Union Insurance agents.

Tuesday, August 19
Alamosa, Colo: 7 p.m. – Banquet Room, Alamosa State College

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) announced today that it will coordinate Farm Bill workshops in rural Colorado and New Mexico, including a meeting in Clovis, N.M., on August 20.

RMFU President Kent Peppler, a Mead, Colo., farmer, said, “The so-called ‘Farm Bill’ is 700 pages of legislation on food, energy, conservation, and rural community programs. It took two years to reach compromises that protect our food and energy security without hurting the environment or breaking the budget. This bill impacts everyone, not just farming and ranching families. Nearly two-thirds of the funding goes to nutrition, conservation, and energy programs, but it also addresses specific interests of food, fuel and fiber producers and rural communities. It addresses many issues that are important in the Rocky Mountain region. We are pleased that we have been able to build a team of experts who can help rural families understand how the bill affects them.”

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union has put together a group of speakers that includes experts from farm and commodity groups, conservation organizations, rural banking and crop insurance. The workshops will include brief presentations and in-depth question-and-answer sessions. National Farmers Union President Tom Buis will be the keynote speaker.

Other speakers will be drawn from the many sponsoring organizations. The following organizations will participate: Independent Community Bankers of New Mexico, New Mexico Association of Conservation Districts, your county Farmers Union and your local Farmers Union Insurance agents

Wednesday, August 20
Clovis, N.M.: 7 p.m. – K-Bob’s Steakhouse

Today Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) Educational & Charitable Foundation Director Ben Rainbolt announced the award of a $32,500 Rural Business Enterprise Grant (RBEG) from the USDA Rural Development division to Prairie Sunshine Products of La Junta, Colo.

The grant is for development of a goat milk dairy cooperative in Otero County. “Prairie Sunshine Products is building a creamery in La Junta,” Rainbolt said. “This RBEG money will fund a feasibility study and business plan for developing a network of milk suppliers on the co-op model. We are looking forward to helping build this exciting new business.”

At full capacity, Prairie Sunshine’s creamery can process milk from 5,000 goats into $8 million in organic and natural goat cheese per year. So they are looking for more goats. The cooperative will consist of goat dairies across southern Colorado. The initial plan is to put together a group of ten dairies to supply milk to the creamery. The co-op will also help producers get certified organic.

“The market created by the creamery could create a half dozen new goat dairies and dozens of new jobs in rural southern Colorado,” Rainbolt said. “The co-op model lets big operations and start-ups leverage resources so that everybody shares the risks and the rewards.”

Prairie Sunshine hopes to begin creamery operations in 2009. They have milk supply commitments that will meet their needs for the first year of operation. The co-op will help them move to their full capacity, producing 800 tons of goat cheese per year. And that takes 5,000 goats. “There are more than 40,000 goats in Colorado today,” Rainbolt said. “And more than 300,000 diary goats nationwide. Goat dairy products are a young, barely tapped market. It’s a recipe for success.”

On July 7, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) President Kent Peppler joined 27 other American agricultural leaders for a tour of Belgium, Germany, and France that will showcase rural development, conservation, renewable energy and sustainable agriculture in the European Union (EU). The tour is sponsored by the German Marshall Fund of the United States and RUPRI (the Rural Policy Institute at the University of Missouri).

The delegation, which includes National Farmers Union President Tom Buis, USDA Undersecretary of Rural Development Thomas Dorr, and representatives of national and regional agricultural groups from across the country, convened Monday, July 7, in Brussels, Belgium. Their schedule includes meetings with journalists, EU officials, and representatives of many innovative agricultural programs. They will be touring nature reserves in the Ardennes, the Morbach energy park housing solar, biofuel, and wind installations, the major grain-handling port of Metz, a French cooperative community, and many other rural development projects.

“The EU has been a leader in responding to climate change and promoting sustainable agriculture,” Peppler said. “I’m looking forward to seeing their renewable energy programs at work and learning more about their plans for the future of rural community life in Europe.”

Denver >> Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) President Kent Peppler sent a letter to USDA Secretary Ed Schafer urging swift action on the request by Governor Ritter to assist Colorado producers being impacted by growing drought conditions.

Peppler followed up with a letter to Colorado Governor Bill Ritter petitioning for a broader response to the drought conditions in Eastern Colorado through the release of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acreage in additional counties. “We support the release of CRP grazing land to feed endangered livestock in southeastern Colorado,” Peppler said. “But we need to help animals throughout eastern Colorado, where conditions have become just as serious.”

In the letter to USDA, RMFU expressed strong support for Governor Ritter’s request that the USDA Farm Service Agency assess the impact of local drought conditions throughout Colorado agriculture and prepare damage assessment reports for crop and pasture losses. Wheat farmers are at risk as well as livestock growers, with projected yields at barely fifty percent of last year’s production. RMFU also supports immediate action on Ritter’s request for emergency access to land set aside by conservation programs to allow haying and grazing for livestock producers.

Farmers and ranchers in all of eastern Colorado are facing financial disaster from drought conditions. Ranchers will be forced to liquidate livestock herds because cattle can’t be fed on drought-depleted pasture. Farmers with reduced wheat yields and increased input costs will also face financial pressures. “Congress passed the 2008 farm bill to protect our domestic food supply against natural disasters,” Peppler said. “The economies of our rural communities and our state depend on agriculture, and consumers depend on our farmers and ranchers for a safe and reliable supply of food. Working together, through application of programs already in place, we can make sure farmers and ranchers survive these disasters and continue to provide for our country’s food needs.”

Peppler praised the cooperative teamwork of the Colorado Department of Agriculture and Colorado Division of Wildlife. “They are working together to ensure that haying and grazing will be done consistent with sound wildlife management practices,” Peppler said. He pledged that RMFU and its producer-members will work closely and cooperatively with USDA and all Colorado government agencies to be sure environmental practices are met.

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union represents 23,000 farm, ranch and rural families in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. RMFU works closely with consumer groups, conservation groups, and local food coalitions to promote and support food safety and independence, and to make farming a sustainable family occupation.

 Denver >> Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Cooperative & Economic Development Center (CDC) Director Ben Rainbolt has hired Bill Midcap to support RMFU’s energy efforts and other rural development opportunities. Midcap has joined RMFU as a rural economic development specialist and cooperative outreach coordinator.

He lives in Fort Morgan, Colorado. He is a lifelong resident of Morgan County, where he owned and operated Midcap Farms for many years. He has also spent many years working with rural electric cooperatives, or REAs. Since 1990 he has served on the board of directors for the Morgan County Rural Electric Association. He has been treasurer of the Colorado Rural Electric Association and on their current board of directors. He has served as a delegate to the Tri-State Generation & Transmission Association and is the chair of the Colorado Electric Education Committee. He has been president of the board of directors for the Mid-West Electric Consumers Association, and an active board member since 1992. Mid-West is a regional coalition of consumer-owned utilities, REAs, public power districts, and municipal electric utilities. They purchase hydropower generated at federal multi-purpose projects in the Missouri River basin.

“We are excited to have Bill’s expertise available to our members, and he will be a great help in coordinating our outreach to the local cooperatives. Bill’s experience with utilities and RMFU’s commitment to renewable energy will make a winning combination,” said Rainbolt.

Midcap will work with individuals, community groups, and electric utilities to encourage development of local renewable energy projects, to determine barriers and solutions for project development, and to conduct rural business development. He will work closely with Tony Frank, the CDC’s director of renewable energy, fostering outreach to rural groups and developing business models to support clean energy development and energy efficiency.

Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU), Farmers Union Service Association (FUSA) and Farmers Union Insurance visited the Red Cross – Centennial Chapter in Fort Collins, Colo., to donate $4,000 to their efforts in northern Colorado. “The Centennial Red Cross did an extraordinary job of coordinating assistance to families devastated by the Windsor tornado,” said RMFU President Kent Peppler.

The donation was made in two checks, one for $2,000 from RMFU/FUSA and another for the same amount from Farmers Union Insurance (FUI). On hand for the presentation were Peppler, FUSA General Manager Gary Wilmoth, FUSA agents Bud Frei and Adam Sater, and FUI Senior Vice President Chris Kircher. The checks were given to the chapter’s Executive Director Erin Mounsey.

The Red Cross provides assistance in response to community disasters like the recent tornado as well as supporting armed forces needs and even assisting with individual family emergencies. “On the afternoon of the tornadoes, we were also responding to a single-family house fire,” Mounsey said. While discussing the efforts surrounding the Windsor tornado he said, “Everyone in northern Colorado came through to make this disaster relief effort a success.”

“Our organizations want to help,” said FUSA GM Gary Wilmoth, “and the Red Cross – Centennial is the place where we feel we can do the most good. They are the spirit of community service in action.”

“The current shortage of tomatoes because of a Salmonella scare underscores the need for trusted, local sources of produce,” said Ben Rainbolt, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Co-op Development Center Director. “The FDA is investigating around 150 Salmonella illnesses scattered over 16 states. Last year during the same period, there were only three cases nationally.”

The vast majority of Salmonella cases this year are in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. As with the spinach recall last summer, the pattern suggests that a single produce source is involved. “The best way to avoid this food risk and others like it,” Rainbolt said, “is to buy your produce from a trusted local source. Regional and national outbreaks of dangerous infections like Salmonella and E. coli are the downside of corporate agribusiness. Industrial agriculture dumps all the produce in one bin, in a sense, so that a few bushels of contaminated tomatoes harvested on one acre somewhere may be scattered across the entire state or nation. This makes tracing the source of the contamination very difficult, and it makes it almost impossible to be confident that any tomato from that ‘bin’ is safe. The bigger the bin, the bigger the risk.”

Rainbolt urged consumers to buy local and be sure their food source is clear about what ‘local’ means. “You can’t just assume that farmers market produce is local, for example. Make sure your producer is selling their own product. And shop just as carefully at your grocery or co-op.”

Buying local has its downside, too, Rainbolt added. “It means going back to seasonal produce. Local tomatoes will be scarce in Colorado until they have time to ripen from the late spring. But there’s nothing wrong with seasonal eating. A fresh tomato from your neighbors in rural Colorado beats one hauled a thousand miles any time.”

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“Cooperative Development Centers are important to our efforts to support rural America,” Colorado USDA Director, Business and Community Programs, Dolores Sanchez-Maes said. “We have had some great successes in our partnerships with RMFU’s Cooperative Development Center, and we are excited to have new opportunities this year.”

RMFU recently assisted the High Plains Food Co-op in securing federal money, through the USDA Rural Development program, to explore ways of using the Internet to connect local food producers with consumers cooperatively. RMFU will use this year’s funds to help create new, innovative farm cooperatives and to educate and provide technical assistance for existing cooperatives in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.

The RMFU Cooperative Development Center, formed 12 years ago, is the oldest institution of its kind in the United States. Since its inception, it has provided assistance through funds, education, and technical consulting for more than 70 rural cooperative projects. Cooperative philosophy has been a fundamental concept of the Farmers Union network since its beginnings more than a century ago. “Farmers and ranchers throughout Colorado benefit immensely from the resources and expertise provided by the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union’s Cooperative Development Center,” said Senator Ken Salazar (D-Colo.). “This additional funding will allow this important institution to continue its efforts to help revitalize the rural communities of Colorado, and in doing so, strengthen and preserve the agricultural tradition of the Rocky Mountain west.”

“The next farm bill must have adequate resources to help producers further participate in the food chain to create viable competitive alternatives in a rapidly consolidating marketplace. New generation cooperatives are a valuable resource for producers,” Carter told the committee.

Carter, who serves as secretary-treasurer of the Mountain View Harvest Cooperative talked about the importance of government programs that provide loans, grants and other types of services to fledgling producer-owned cooperatives. Mountain View Harvest Cooperative, which eventually raised $5 million to purchase a state-of-the-art bakery, in its infancy used a $100,000 Rural Business Enterprise Grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to conduct its feasibility analysis. Following the analysis and formation of a business plan, 500 shares of stock were marketed for $12,500 apiece. Each share carried the right and obligation to deliver 900 bushels of wheat to the co-op. The cooperative utilizes the best wheat for the bakery operation and markets the rest on the open market. Since its purchase by the farmer-owned cooperative, the bakery has more than doubled its production.

“Not too many wheat farmers have $12,500 lying around in the kitchen drawer to invest in a new business concept,” Carter said. “But the local Farm Credit System stepped up to the plate with an attractive signature loan program in which producers could borrow the funds necessary for their equity investment.”

Carter recommended that the next farm bill have the following provisions to assistance farmer-owned cooperatives:
•Adequate funding for feasibility studies
•Rural Cooperative Development Grant Program funding at $50 million to allow for the operation of a cooperative development center in every state
•Strengthening of the Business and Industry Loan Guarantee program
•Continuation of the Value-Added Grant program that was initiated in 2001
•Directing of federal agencies to increase the percentage of products they purchase from locally-based, producer owned enterprises.