Years ago, the agriculture trade organization group I was a part of had a booth at a food festival in the shadow of the City and County Building in Denver. We were there just to share information and meet consumers so we could talk about food and agriculture with producers who obviously cared enough about food choices to be there. As I was holding my beef factoid dry-erase sign, I asked a passerby if he wanted to take a crack at my trivia question: the total value of the beef industry in Colorado.

Without even looking up he brushed me off and told me he didn’t need agriculture because he’s a vegetarian.

I started to walk after him, saying agriculture grows plants, too. He looked over his shoulder and began to walk faster so I decided that a foot pursuit would not leave him with a good impression of Colorado ag producers. I turned back.

We’re lucky to have the most abundant, safest, and most affordable food supply in the world and it’s amazing that less than 2% of the population is involved in production agriculture to feed the 98%. The agriculture industry is second only to oil and gas in Colorado, and it is certainly an industry that didn’t stop producing food, fuel, fiber and tax revenue during uncertain times. The value of the beef industry, incidentally, is about $4 billion annually. We’re home to about 12,000 family-owned cattle operations like ours.

We’re an important cattle-feeding state as well, and we’re home to some of the largest feedlots in the country. Even though activists love to paint them in a negative light, they are efficient and allow the cattle we raise to make their way to your table. It’s Gabel to table, if you will.

Dr. John Matsushima, who turned 101 on Christmas Eve, and I visit regularly via video chat. He’s a giant in the cattle feeding industry and spent 50 years at Colorado State University specializing in cattle nutrition. As a boy, Matsushima showed cattle in Weld County 4-H and he loves to tell the story of one county fair when Warren Monfort was searching for his son, Kenny, as his cattle class was about to enter the ring. Matsushima giggled and said he told Monfort, “sure I know where he is, he’s under the grandstand reading a comic book.” Kenny Monfort, of course, went on to revolutionize cattle feeding. Matsushima played a role in that.

It was Warren Monfort who convinced Matsushima to leave his first post at the University of Nebraska to come to CSU in 1961. On a trip to Nebraska to tempt Matsushima back to Colorado, the pair ate breakfast with cattle-feeding pioneers Louis Dinklage of Nebraska and Kansas’ Earl Brookover. Typically, they would all order ham and eggs but that day the group ordered cereal. It was over that bowl of cold cereal that Matsushima thought both he and cattle would enjoy a hot breakfast. It was at that table that he conceived the idea for steam-flaked corn. Steam flaked corn – which, when piled, produces heat and steams when mixed with other ingredients and fed – dropped the cost of feeding cattle by 10% and is, to this day, fed at feedlots and dairies the world over. One longtime cattle feeder, who took Matsushima’s nutrition classes at CSU in the 1970s, once told me no other individual has been as impactful on cattle feeding efficiencies than Matsushima.

There are thousands of stories about the history of agriculture in the state, but the current chapter is one of the opinions of very few shouted and earning headlines. When the PAUSE Initiative was introduced, it stood to dismantle the entire beef industry from family ranches to grocery shelves and it is agriculture producers and consumers who would have been forced to foot the bill.

Last year, Sen. Jessie Danielson (D-Wheat Ridge) sponsored and passed legislation that deeply affects the way agriculture labor is paid. She refused to engage major agriculture groups before it was introduced. The additional costs associated with that bill will be shouldered by both agriculture producers and consumers. When cage-free eggs are the only type legally sold in our state by 2025, those costs will be shouldered by agricultural producers and consumers. There is much debate about the return on investment of these feel-good bills, but I would argue that agriculture deserves a seat at the table when activists have the industry on the menu.

Your dinner plate ought not be legislated, nor should it be influenced by fear-mongering extremists. The vote for what you eat – grass-fed, free-range, antibiotic-free (all meat that is commercially available is antibiotic free, no need to pay more unless you want to) grain-finished, plant-based, locally-grown, or hand-fed and-massaged-Wagyu – should be done with your wallet.

Rachel Gabel writes about agriculture and rural issues. She is assistant editor of The Fence Post Magazine, the region’s preeminent agriculture publication. Gabel is a daughter of the state’s oil and gas industry and a member of one of the state’s 12,000 cattle-raising families, and she has authored children’s books used in hundreds of classrooms to teach students about agriculture.