Front Range farmers find cheaper pastures

Wellington farmer Tom Herring has been through this all before.
Herring’s farm is for sale and he hopes to move north to Wyoming where he says the land is cheaper, the towns are friendlier and there are fewer people.
The Fort Collins native grew up on a farm at the corner of Drake Road and Overland Trail.
The city grew faster than the crops Herring cultivated. So at age 49 he sold most of his land in Fort Collins and moved north to an irrigated farm north of Wellington. Now 63, he hopes to move north again. This time to Wheatland or Torrington, Wyo.
Herring has joined a growing crop of farmers swapping their Front Range farms and increasingly metropolitan lifestyles for the still agricultural communities of eastern and northeastern Colorado and Wyoming.
Ed Orr of Orr Land Co. in Greeley said while it’s no mass exodus, the movement of farmers selling their land along the Front Range moving east and north is constant. They go in search of less expensive land and communities where farming is still part of the culture.
“We see a lot of the agricultural industry of course going east, but also a lot of Colorado farmers going into Wyoming,” Orr said
Land prices to the east and north are low enough that for farmers who don’t want to get out of agriculture altogether “those are great places to go,” Orr said. “You get a lot more land for your dollar as you go further east.”
Orr described land values that step down by various landmarks to the east. “It will change every five to 10 miles. Generally, anything west of Interstate 25 is the highest value ag property. As you move east of I-25 prices go down.”x09
In general terms, Orr said, most land west of I-25 holds development value to some degree. “We’re seeing anything there trading in the $8,000 to $10,000 an acre range as a minimum up to somewhere in the $25,000 an acre maximum. That would be something that could have development occur fairly rapidly.”
And it can go for more, Orr said, noting that ground northeast of Berthoud sold recently for $28,500 per acre.
Move east of Interstate 85 and prices drop dramatically, topping at about $3,000 an acre down to $2,000 for irrigated ground, and $1,500 for dryland.
That market is still attractive to commuters who work in cities but want to live in the country. That helps the land hold higher values.
“Jump out to Fort Morgan and you start seeing land in the $1,700 to $1,800 an acre range, on up to maybe $3,000 an acre. Now you’re getting into property that certainly, if you sold your farm along the Front Range for $5,000 to $10,000 an acre and you go out and buy that stuff at $2,000 an acre, you can farm for a long time.”
As land values drop for farmland of comparable quality, farm profitability increases. Orr offers this example: “A return of 10 percent on $2,000 an acre dirt is $200 per acre per year. There are a lot of crops you can go out and plant that will typically return about $200 per acre per year.”
Water, too, is likely to come cheaper in eastern Colorado. Brian Werner, public information officer for the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, estimated that an acre-foot of water from the Colorado Big Thompson project sells for between $16,000 and $17,000. By comparison, there are some storage water supplies in the Fort Morgan region selling for about $1,250 to $1,400 an acre foot, said Don Chapman, superintendent of the Riverside Irrigation District.
Farmers are leaving the Front Range for reasons other than hard costs. It’s easier to farm in the still agriculture-based communities of northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming, Orr said.
“We see that as much as anything,´ said Tomm Owens, broker with Orr Land Co. Farmers who head east and northeast find less traffic and more understanding neighbors. They can run their equipment up and down the roads and don’t have to worry about spraying weeds with an aerial sprayer at 5 a.m., Owens said.
“Farmers are pretty independent anyway. They’d just as soon not be around a lot of people.”
Herring echoes that. “Too many people in this country,” he said.
His farm, a half-mile north of Owl Canyon and two miles west of Interstate 25, was once remote. Today there are 35-acre parcels to the north and the town of Wellington headed his way from the south.
“This isn’t nowhere anymore,” Herring observes. “It’s just unbelievable.”
Herring said Wheatland and Torrington seem like friendly towns and he knows some people who have moved there. “They’re small and they’re like it used to be when I was a kid down here,” he said.
Wyoming offers fewer restrictions and lower taxes, too, Herring said. Wyoming doesn’t levy personal or corporate income taxes. “The taxes are terrible here in Colorado anymore.”

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