Disasters Keep Coming - Ag Commissioner
As Colorado agriculture producers pivot to avoid drought, fire, and COVID,
Colorado’s Ag Commissioner sees the gap between disasters getting smaller.
Commissioner Kate Greenberg says disaster relief is still coming in from the 2018 drought as the state Drought Taskforce and the Ag Impact Taskforce try to assess the impact of the 2020 drought.
Greenberg: “We’re really trying to find out what’s available, what’s working, what’s not. And we’re expecting more years like this more frequently. The last two out of three have been real bad drought years. And we’ve been lucky in both of them to go into them with good storage. What happens if we don’t fill our reservoirs and then we go into another drought season where we don’t get monsoons? We haven’t been getting monsoons for the last two years. And then we don’t have precipitation and we don’t have storage? What does that mean? Disaster payments would be: A, insufficient; and B, just rolling out the door continuously in a lot of circumstances. And that’s something that makes us really nervous.“
Greenberg says the Agriculture Commission has an Ag Recovery Team working on COVID-19 assistance. It has been advocating for recovery and relief dollars since the pandemic began. The group is also working directly with producers and businesses up and down the supply chain. She also said she is hoping additional COVID resources will be announced very soon.
