The second annual Western Colorado Farm and Ranch Innovation Expo took place last week (November 13-14, 2025) at the Montrose County Event Center.
LISA YOUNG: On today's KVNF Farm Friday, we take a look back at the three day event. I spoke with Steve Hale, president of Shavano Conservation District, about the farming event on Friday afternoon.
STEVE HALE: We have an incredible show down here at the Montrose County Event Center, and this is our second annual event. We started this last year to really showcase a lot of great agricultural innovation across the board for both farms and row crop, you know, high value crops and things that we are so diverse in this region.
We have everything from vegetables, onions, things like that, alfalfa and and beans, edible beans, all this stuff. And then we have ranching community with cattle and sheep and equine, you know, horses. It's such a diverse picture of agriculture.
So we wanted to showcase what's going on and really have these vendors come in and and show us products and services that are going to move the needle for us in terms of keeping our farms and ranches profitable and up to date on what's really out there and how we can take care of our natural resources better to be more efficient on water management, be better at handling livestock and things like virtual fencing and all this that we showcased today. But it's it's a good chance for us to get the agricultural community together.
YOUNG: Earlier in the day, livestock handlers were treated to a special demonstration by Halter, a virtual fencing company. Spokesperson, Alana Chavez, spoke about the cutting edge livestock management technology.
ALANA CHAVEZ: So halter is the global leader in virtual fencing. And so today I'm here just to support our ranchers. So we did a demonstration earlier today where I made some folks some cows and kind of just helped them understand exactly how fencing works through different cues and how you can apply it to your ranch to give yourself some more time, buy less fencing and just really have a very efficient operation.
YOUNG: Outside of the event center on a very warm November day. I spoke with Robert about why he attended this year's expo.
ROBERT: Really to understanding some of the services and different things that they have to offer, as well as looking at some of the emerging technologies and how that can help better benefit agriculture as a whole.
YOUNG: Is there a technology that you would like to employ?
ROBERT: Either drone or autonomous, anything that combines many type of agriculture related activities into one or makes things simpler for the producer to help basically cut their overhead costs.
YOUNG: Milling through the event center, I noticed a number of vendors on hand, including an interesting drone business out of Utah with a very edgy name,
YOUNG: Lisa Young. We're out here at the Western Colorado Farm and Ranch Innovation Expo at Montrose County Event Center, and I am speaking with Teera Larsen. Teera, I amreally interested in what you have here. Tell me about your company.
TEERA LARSEN: So we are Wild Ass Aerial spraying and seeding and we're based out of Utah. So we are custom applicators. We spray pesticides or excuse me, insecticide, herbicide. And we also can seed and spread fertilizer.
YOUNG: I'm looking down at this drone. Tell me what I'm looking at.
LARSEN: So this is an EA vision G150. It's one of the larger drones on the market at this point in time. It's probably actually one of the largest drones. It has a twenty gallon payload capacity for liquid and then one hundred and eighty payload capacity for our granular or dry spreading.
YOUNG: This year's Western Colorado Farm and Ranch Innovation Expo was held in conjunction with the West Slope Water Summit, which took place on Thursday, November 13th.
The next big AG event in Montrose takes place in January, with the newly minted Roots of Renewal Conference, formerly known as Western Colorado Soil Health Food and Farm Forum.
Tickets are on sale now for that event, which takes place January twenty third and twenty fourth at the Montrose Pavilion.
