Author: Rachel Gabel
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Agriculture’s workforce act addresses H-2A program issues | Rachel Gabel
A bill recently introduced by U.S. Rep. G.T. Thompson (Pennsylvania-15) making changes to the accessibility and cost of agricultural labor has wide support from growers who utilize H-2A visa program workers, including in Colorado. The H-2A program hasn’t been statutorily reformed in 40 years. It is widely used in Colorado by producers with seasonal labor…
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Patchwork laws challenge nationwide hog production | Rachel Gabel
The newest iteration of the long-overdue Farm Bill leaves intact California’s Prop 12. There’s an obscene amount of information within the bill, but animal welfare laws have the potential to shape the food systems here in America. A country unable to feed itself is a country unable to defend itself. In terms of Prop 12,…
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Conservation efforts emphasize the lesser prairie chicken | Rachel Gabel
Reid DeWalt, deputy director of Colorado Parks and Wildlife, spoke to the Water Resources and Agriculture Review Committee about the Lesser Prairie Chicken and moving conservation forward. He said in 2026, CPW staff counted 77 males on 13 leks, a number that has dropped year over year since 2024. There are fewer than 1,000 chickens…
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Pigs engineered to fight alpha-gal syndrome | Rachel Gabel
If I were an evil genius trying to hamstring animal agriculture, I would create a fly that eats livestock alive and a tick whose bite and spit causes some people to have an allergic reaction to meat. (Insert evil laugh here) However, it appears someone beat me to it. Just when I think headlines in agriculture can’t…
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Candidate’s disturbing anti-animal agriculture history | Rachel Gabel
Rep. Manny Rutinel has busted out a cowboy hat for campaign photos and has thrown it into the ring to represent Colorado’s 8th Congressional District in D.C. He is endorsed by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey democrat who serves on the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, where he works to “rein in the abuses of factory…
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CPW has a weighty decision to make on a recent wolf kill | Rachel Gabel
Gov. Jared Polis made three new appointments to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission and reappointed both Richard Reading, at-large representative, and vice chair Gabriel Otero, sportspersons representative who resides west of the Continental Divide. Appointed as a production agriculture representative residing west of the Continental Divide, John LeCoq of Silverthorne, is, according to a release, a longtime landowner of 400 acres of grazed land that is…
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Colorado GOP has lost its sense of what’s best for the people | Rachel Gabel
The Republican Party I grew up knowing was the party of small business, big business, and job creation. It was the party that signed paychecks and built economies and legacies. In 1980, Ronald Reagan swept Colorado in nearly every county, including Denver and Boulder. By 1988, Michael Dukakis, a Democrat who lost to George H.W. Bush, won…
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Processing plants are an important piece of the ag puzzle | Rachel Gabel
Concrete barricades blocked the entrance to the Cargill beef plant in Ft. Morgan, Colo., on May 20. About 1,700 workers had been locked out by the company after months of contract negotiations ended with workers voting to reject the company’s last and best offer by a large margin. The workers who couldn’t report to work reported to…
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Public Lands Rule rescinding keeps public lands in public hands | Rachel Gabel
The Public Lands Rule has been rescinded. The rule, first proposed in 2023, would have complicated the balanced partnership between federal agencies and all multiple uses on those public lands. In 2024, the Bureau of Land Management made the rule worse by allowing conservation to rise above the level of all other multiple uses, essentially…
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Antitrust suit seeks better prices for farmers | Rachel Gabel
A stack of papers is keeping eastern Colorado and western Kansas farmers out of the lucrative west-coast market and bringing a group together to levy an antitrust suit against the railroads. Stefan Soloviev was an unlikely farmer with his full-sleeve tattoos, big-city upbringing, and a last name that looked very different from the primarily German surnames…