At Mountain Quality Farms, owner Reed Fishering has lived that uncertainty day by day. His operation is more than a business. It's a collaboration of nine farming families who've grown sweet corn for decades. But this season began with a warning that changed everything.
“We were cut off, you know, at the very beginning, but you know, the water users were very, they were very forthright in telling us, ‘don't expect anything more than 50% even at the beginning, which has never happened before,’” Fishering told KVNF.
In past years, Mountain Quality Farms planted nearly 1,200 acres. This year they planted around 600, a reduction driven almost entirely by the drought. With less water available, irrigation slowed dramatically. A 30-acre field that once took four days to water now takes 14. That means more labor and more fuel burned jumping from field to field. Fishering says the drought hit hardest in March when growers had to decide what they could afford to plant and what they couldn't.
Fishering said that deciding how much land to allocate to corn was difficult, but that “farmers can be very prudent when needed, and I think we’re seeing that.”
Then something unexpected happened. After months of dryness, the monsoon season arrived. Humidity and steady rain swept across the valley, and the corn responded almost instantly.
But the monsoons brought their own complications. Instead of ripening in staggered waves, the corn has come in all at once. And that means that Mountain Quality Farms has to move very quickly to get the harvest in.
“When the monsoon or this humidity brings on the corn all at once, I have, you know, five fields that are ready all at the same time. And I don't have the crew to handle more than maybe two of the five fields at a given time,” Fishering said. “It's been daunting. We've put in the longest days I've ever had. I mean, we get in here, we start harvesting at 3:30 in the morning, and then we're done packing around 9 o'clock at night.”
And while the monsoons have helped the corn, they didn't solve everything. Corn earworm has been the valley's most persistent pest, cutting yields by about 30%. Researchers at Colorado State University continue studying whether warming temperatures are allowing certain insects to overwinter in the valley. But pests are only a part of the story. Sweet corn is more than a crop**;** it's an economic engine. Fishering calls it the linchpin of the farming community. There are nine families involved in farming much of the valley's sweet corn acreage. And the industry supports equipment shops, pallet suppliers, trucking operations, and dozens of small wholesalers across the region, not to mention the larger grocery store chains in Colorado and beyond. Yet making a profit for sweet corn growers has been elusive. Inflation has compounded the strain. Diesel is now over $5 again. Input costs have climbed. Labor regulations have changed. And yet Fishering has kept his corn prices below the consumer price index since taking over the business, something he's proud of, but which comes at a cost. Many growers planted only 60% of their usual acreage this year, letting fields go fallow simply to survive.
This year's drought has made the future increasingly uncertain. “I mean, the monsoon's been great and all that, but if we don't get snowpack, I don't think that there'd be farming here next year if we don't get enough snowpack.” But Fishering also says, “I don't want to go down without a fight. And that might be my stubbornness, it might be my, you know, competitiveness, but I just, I can't see myself giving up on it.”
