Author: Rachel Gabel
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The cattle industry needs facts, not tweets | Rachel Gabel
Journalists, love them or hate them, are bound by the responsibility of reporting the news from the outside. They are tasked with asking questions, even if answering them exposes the announcement’s weaknesses. Especially if asking questions exposes the holes. They are bound by ethics and meant to report news without inserting themselves into it. They…
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Chaotic meeting began with attempt to squelch public comment | Rachel Gabel
When Attorney General Phil Weiser takes the Governor’s office in January, he must immediately address the chaos of the latest round of appointees to the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission to assure stakeholders that he’s willing to put pressure on the bleeding wound. The keys to the kingdom have fallen into the wrong hands and…
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Private property rights challenge rural Colorado communities | Rachel Gabel
If there were ever a topic that I believe deeply in, it’s private property rights. If there were ever a topic that leaves me in a moral conundrum more often than not, it’s private property rights. The northern portion of Weld County is where towns like Grover and Hereford are hunkered down against the wind.…
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Livestock grazing regulations need flexible updates | Rachel Gabel
The Bureau of Land Management last updated their livestock grazing regulations the year I graduated from high school. I am 49. Assessing rangeland health can’t be done once and not revisited. This year is a prime example that managers must be able to make decisions not just year by year, but week by week. This…
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Farmers and ranchers win on NIETC cancellation | Rachel Gabel
The Department of Energy rolled into Lamar, Colo., last week and Office of Electricity Assistant Secretary Katie Jereza stood in her neat, green suit in front of a room filled with farmers and ranchers and landowners. The crowd was filled with straw cowboy hats and sweat-stained ball caps and T-shirts and button-down chambray shirts that…
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Proposed EPA changes could save truckers billions | Rachel Gabel
Agriculture is in distress across nearly every segment across much of the U.S. and certainly to a more dire degree in the West. If it were not a historic drought, some pressures could be eased. Others can be eased through common sense and a rollback of regulations. And, perhaps, the passage of a Farm Bill…
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A historic moment during another major drought | Rachel Gabel
Gustav Sumnick immigrated from Germany, traveled to Oklahoma and decided rather than a Sooner, he wanted to be a farmer. He moved north to Nebraska and married an Irish immigrant farmer’s daughter. They farmed near Fremont, Nebraska, where the Platte and the Elkhorn Rivers meet and grew the family farming operation to over 1,100 acres. …
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Weiser’s leadership crucial for rural win-win | Rachel Gabel
Attorney General Phil Weiser is going to win the gubernatorial election. That said, Colorado agriculture and rural communities have a 30-year track record of finding the win-win be it for species or industries or habitat. Former Governor Roy Romer possessed what Gov. Jared Polis has demonstrated repeatedly he doesn’t have: the willingness to find compromise…
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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,…