Northern Colorado farmers told U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper this week that tariffs and President Donald Trump’s decision to import $40 billion worth of beef from Argentina have hurt Colorado’s agricultural industry. But the administration’s cuts to scientific research are almost as bad, they said in a forum in Fort Morgan Tuesday night. The forum, hosted at Keith Bath Farms, brought together farmers who grow corn, wheat, sugar beets and mushrooms, as well as dairy producers. Hickenlooper said he wanted to hear directly from Colorado farmers about how tariffs have affected them so he could share their stories with his Senate colleagues in Washington, D.C., in hopes of persuading Congress to reclaim its authority over tariffs. Rob Graves and his daughter, Amber, operate the Morning Fresh Dairy in Bellvue, in the Pleasant Valley area of Larimer County. It’s a five-generation dairy that has been in business since 1894. On the input side, his ability to get phosphates for his operations from Russia has been impacted by tariffs, Graves said. On the export side, corn and wheat prices are down because of tariffs. Kreg Vollmer is a senior agriculturist at Western Sugar in Sterling. Five or six years ago, he said, it cost about $1,110 per acre to harvest sugar beets. Now it’s between $1,400 and $1,500 per acre, including fertilizer and pest control costs. “And if you don’t have an outlet for the product, it’s not just us who are hurting,” Vollmer said. “It makes it hard for the bankers to support us, too, especially in small communities. If we can’t get loans,” he said, noting that Wells Fargo has gotten out of ag banking, “there aren’t many options for us. The balance sheets don’t match up, and banks can’t give us a loan…There are guys who won’t grow anything this year,” Vollmer said. Hickenlooper noted that a couple of years of that is when someone loses their land. Roy Pfaltzgraff operates the third-generation PFZ Farms in Haxtun. He grows a variety of crops, including mushrooms, and is quite involved in the scientific and technological side of farming. He also is a beekeeper. Pfaltzgraff said his farm doesn’t have access to crop insurance or other government agricultural subsidies, and he’s also had struggles with his bank. Equipment costs have gone up by 50%, he said, and it’s almost impossible to find new equipment because it’s imported from China. Instead, he’s had to buy used equipment. But that means parts, and those have been impacted by tariffs, too, he explained. Don Brown of Yuma served as Hickenlooper’s commissioner of agriculture and runs a farm and ranch operation that dates back to 1908. “We’re on the edge of huge problems” akin to the ones that hit agriculture in the 1980s, he said. During that decade, input prices exceeded what farmers could get for their crops, resulting in more than 250,000 farm bankruptcies. Brown said he’s seeing long-term family farms sell off their land, whether due to retirement or pressure from lending institutions. And there are no successors, no young people who want to go into farming, Pfaltzgraff said. History has shown that tariffs are a great short-term solution, but that’s not what’s happening now, Hickenlooper explained. Then there’s the issue of Brazil. Pfaltzgraff said Branzil can raise two to three crops per year without government restrictions. “We’ve told America our farmers feed the world. We’ve lost the world market,” he said. The $40 billion the Trump administration is paying for Brazilian beef puts the U.S. at risk, Hickenlooper added. The hidden factor: agricultural research One of the reasons American agriculture has been so strong is the balance between public and private partnerships in research, Vollmer said. “We’ve given everyone these technologies and practices, but we’re not supporting our own agricultural research.” Private organizations, companies, and land-grant universities worked together on solutions, but those grants were withdrawn at the beginning of 2025. Now, keeping abreast of new technologies has been extremely problematic, Vollmer said. Pfaltzgraff noted that at one point, there were eight research projects on his farm. Six disappeared with the stroke of a pen, and that research will never be published because the researchers are now out of work. He now has to pay for that research himself, as he said it’s important to develop the technologies. The cuts were brutal, he said. He would share the results of that research with everyone across the valley. “It’s all gone now,” he said. Hickenlooper said he’s heard the frustration and anger over cutting science grants for agriculture, manufacturing, artificial intelligence, pharmaceuticals and engineering. “We’re now going in full reverse,” but the United States has never gone backwards in scientific research before. “This will bankrupt the country,” Hickenlooper said. “It’s an active war against science.” For the future of agricultural policy, in addition to tariffs, the government should also consider labor and improvements to the H-2A and H-2 B visa systems. “The labor force isn’t there,” Vollmer said. There’s a lot of automated technology, but the labor is needed to operate it, he explained. “If we don’t have the labor force, we don’t have the farms. And if we don’t have the farms, these rural communities that are already struggling will dry up.” The immigration issues, and involvement of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is real, but they aren’t seeing it in northeastern Colorado, Brown said. With the border as secure as it can be now, Hickenlooper said, it’s time for Democrats and Republicans to create a guest worker system. The farmers noted they aren’t finding people willing to pick fruit or vegetables or to milk a cow at 1 a.m. “It’s hard to find consistent help,” Vollmer said. Pfaltzgraff noted that he had a problem with a sprayer and called a commercial sprayer instead. He said he was told that they have the equipment, but no one to operate it. ...read more read less