He was a tough bastard, he told me, when he introduced himself at the Colorado Farm Show. He was a rancher who had weathered bad years. He had been hurt loading cows years ago and those breaks and bruises he brushed off as a younger man were beginning to catch up to him. He dug around in his wallet and produced a folded page of newsprint. It was worn soft, as paper will do. I unfolded it and recognized it as a page torn out of The Fence Post Magazine with my byline on it. I didn’t need to read it, I knew it was a brutally honest piece that first appeared in my weekly column in Colorado Politics and the Denver and Colorado Springs Gazettes. I was trying to pen a column about fall work and shipping calves and the short time where it almost feels like one job is wrapped up before beginning the next.

But, as I wrote, “all I could think was of the man I know who finished a job, organized his paperwork, dispersed his cowherd, and shot himself in the barn. All I could think of was the man who received a call from his banker, drove part way home, and did the same.” It was written during a time in which the ag community suffered half-a-dozen suicides of their own.

It is still true mental health services are sparse in rural Colorado and those in communities like my own are hesitant to reach out and seek help.

I wrote we had a tremendously high percentage of heifers open, not bred, that were culled that year. It had been dry and hot, and we couldn’t retain open heifers and cows just because I liked them. I wrote the weight on the shoulders of ranchers is more than just the open heifer sent to the sale barn.

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“It’s not just the heifer. It’s not just the costs or the bank loan or the dust. It’s the weight of trying to stay profitable in a world that seems to believe agriculture is the one industry that ought not be. It’s the weight of fast-food chains and marketing interns and TikTok sensations who try to dictate production methods when they are unfamiliar, driven by activist dollars, and don’t know which end of a cow rises first when she stands.”

He reminded me again he was “too damn tough” to have been sitting in his pickup at the mailbox reading this and tearing up but that’s where his wife found him. He carries it because it’s a reminder of the day his wife didn’t find his dead body in the pickup, but instead found him crying. Rather than trying to explain, he handed her the article. It’s been in his wallet ever since.

State Sens. Perry Will and Janice Marchman’s, and state Reps. Meghan Lukens and Anthony Hartsook’s, bill, SB24-055 Agricultural and Rural Behavioral Health Care, passed through committee last week. It’s a good bill and it creates a position within the Behavioral Health Administration to be a state-level lead between the BHA and the Colorado Department of Agriculture. It allows grant money to be awarded to existing programs, like the Coffee Break Project and COMET training, that are in place and working. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel or dismiss the efforts already in place by rural Colorado, for rural Colorado.

In committee, this bill, which passed 8-1, was supported by the Colorado Department of Agriculture, the Coffee Break Project (which is part of Valley Wide Health Systems), Colorado Farm Bureau, Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, Rocky Mountain Farm Bureau, individuals from rural Colorado, and rural mental health providers.

Alternatively, the next bill heard in committee, SB24-057 Agricultural Workforce and Suicide Prevention, was presented by state Sen. Tom Sullivan, a Front Range lawmaker. None of the major ag organizations were contacted prior to the introduction of this bill and the Colorado Department of Agriculture did not offer testimony.

This bill creates a new program within CDA and contracts with a group to offer crisis support, something that, though wildly underfunded and understaffed, is already in place through CDA and other outlets. Though I appreciate Sen. Sullivan bringing forward discussion about rural mental health, a bill to benefit agriculture without input from those affected is counterproductive. This bill will move forward to appropriations, though it should be allowed to fall by the wayside in favor of SB24-055.

That tough bastard, after all, doesn’t need a public awareness campaign launched by people in clean shoes who are unfamiliar with rural Colorado. He needs people who understand it’s more than just the heifer.

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.