2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended

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2-07 House Committee Lay Over Unamended Page 25 of 49 Mr. Bany: Madam Chair: Ms'. French: Thank you, Madam Chair. Could Cindy French come join us? There she is. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. I'm Cindy French. I represent the dairy farmers in Colorado. Ijust want you to know that our dairy fanners produce a very safe, wholesome nutritious product in Colorado for all our citizens. That's my little attention grabber there. In all seriousness, our dairy farmers are all from - they are all dairy farm families. They are very honorable people and they product 2.1 billion pounds of dairy products annually for the citizens in Colorado. I want you to know that in concept we suppOli House Bill 1177 and we really appreciate Representative Penry and the Governor's office, the passion that Russell George has on this issue in being able to help us solve water problems in Colorado. Last week we were invited into a small group of agricultural entities, along with Representative Hoppe, Don Ament, Russell George and the Governor and it had to do with another area in Colorado with the Central Conservancy District and the severe water issue that's going on there. So I'm going to use a couple of examples on why we have got to move forward in very actionable steps, both short term and long-term to solve Colorado's water needs. For a dairy farmer feed costs are the most expensive costs on a dairy. Those costs are about 40-50 percent of the dairy operation. They are highly dependent on irrigated forage, which would be corn and alfalfa hay. I wanted to give you an example of what's going on in the Central Conservancy District, which is a huge agricultural area both in farming, dairy operations, cattle operations, etc. But right now it's being proposed that there will be a decrease in water up to about 25 percent. Today I'm hearing up to 50 percent so I'm not sure where that is. So I'm going to use the up to 25 percent. What happens with an up to 25 percent decrease as of April 1 st for dairy operations is that that results in a 30 percent increase in feed costs. So to a cow herd of 500 head that's about a feed increase cost of $600 per day, which equals about $220,000 per year for a dairy farmer. As you know, that would very much put them out of business. www.escriptionist.com Page 25 of 49