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Agriculture Recommendations Bob McLavey, Colorado Department of Agriculture EML+'l GEAC;Y MEASURES: The agricultural industry is grateful that the Governor has already requested agricultural disaster designation for the entire state by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. In addition, however, they would request that the Governor ask Secretary Veneman to make available to farmers and ranchers the ability to hay and graze those lands enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). This would make additional forage available at a critical time, but the action would need to be expeditious to have benefit. Disaster designation does not include authorization for haying and grazing of CRP lands, so a separate action would be necessary. POTENTIAL IMPACTS AND MITIGATION MEASURES: Drought conditions currently impact the winter wheat crop and the rangeland available for grazing livestock. While continued drought will have other impacts, the most immediate, quantifiable impact is on the winter wheat crop that was planted in the Fall of 2001, and is now suffering loss due to drought. • Total acres of winter wheat planted: • Number of acres lost due to drought: 2,350,000 acres 452,166 acres (19% of total acres) • Number of bushels lost due to drought: 15,753,127 bushels • Dollar value of lost wheat due to drought: $41,903,318 Please note that these figures reflect conditions as of 4/30/02. Continued drought will increase these numbers. In addition, the current condition of 95% of rangeland (land available for livestock grazing) is estimated to be "fair" to "very poor ". This means that livestock herds will have less forage available, forcing some ranchers to purchase hay for feeding or to liquidate herds altogether. We are unable to quantify this issue at this time, because those decisions have not been made, but likely will be made by June 1. For irrigated crops, there will be less water available because of drought conditions; and there will be increased pumping costs for those irrigation systems that require electric pumps. Again, it is too early in the season to quantify this impact, since most irrigated crops are now being planted.