KREX - Bennet Celebrates with Palisade Farmers

News Article

By Amanda Brandeis

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., continued his Western Slope tour Tuesday. The tour aims to focus on job growth.

Bennet stopped in Palisade to celebrate five new agricultural easements with farmers. The easements will conserve the land for family farming. Bennet says these conservation protections are crucial to protect farmers in Colorado.

"For many years they've had to live with a lot of uncertainty about what the future would bring. There's only one place, you're standing in it, that produces the quality of peaches we produce right here. There's no other land being created, there's no other microclimate that will allow them to do it. This is the place," Bennet explained.

The Mesa Land Trust has been working with farmers and partners to achieve the easements for over a year. Landowner and partner of C & R Farms, Roblee Talbott, says the land could have been divided into small houses or house lots if there were no agricultural easements to protect the farm land.

In the last 20 years Colorado has lost almost 50 percent of acreage in fruit production.

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