By Ed Otte

Colorado farmers like fracking, dislike residential growth and fear a looming labor shortage.

They can also find a wealth of research information at the USDA and at Colorado State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences, according to Luke Runyon

A reporter with Harvest Public Media, he works at KUNC in Greeley in Weld County. Not coincidentally, Weld County is the third leading agricultural area in the United States.

“Harvest started four years ago out of Kansas City with a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Runyon said at the June 26 Fireside Chat at the Denver Press Club. “It originally was public radio stations in the heartland states that were given seed money by CPB to add reporters to cover agriculture and agribusiness. Harvest was laser-focused on the Midwest but it made sense to have a reporter in Weld County because of its agricultural activity.”

The Fireside Chat was sponsored by the Colorado Pro Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

CPB provided grants to start similar regional networks elsewhere in the country to report on health care, public education and immigration.

“They faded off,” Runyon said because local stations were unable to financially sustain the projects after the CPB grants expired. However, while they faltered, Harvest Public Media flourished. In addition to Colorado, the Harvest network has reporters in Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois and Missouri.

“Everybody eats so it was something people really rallied around,” he said. “”Food and ag issues today are local stories people really latch onto. The transition from the grants to the partner stations raising their own money wasn’t smooth but they worked it out.”

Runyon left Aspen Public Radio in 2013 to begin his Harvest reporting duties at KUNC, six months before the CPB grant ended. Today, KUNC pays his salary.

“I started at the station doing Weld County, northern Colorado stories. Now, I do more state stories and make them appeal to listeners in other states. My workload is split 60/40 with 60 percent of my stories going to Harvest and 40 percent to KUNC. When I do a story, it’s radio first, then I rewrite my copy for our website. Some of my stories are for print, we have partnerships with newspapers. The Kansas City Star prints some of our stories. When newspapers do that, they pay Harvest for those stories.”

Runyon’s stories also appear in the Fence Post, a Greeley-based regional farm and ranch publication.

He likes his coverage responsibilities “because newspapers really don’t have ag beat reporters. Harvest is covering stories newspapers don’t anymore. The nice thing about Harvest is that I’m given more leeway than a general assignment reporter. I know I’m on the hook for a certain number of stories each month but I have time to work on investigative stories, do research, do pre-interviews.”

Observations from his reporting:

“Farmers love fracking. One acre of land to an oil and gas company gives them money to put their kids through college.”

“Farmers are more worried about development and cities that are thirsty. There’s a big bump-up in development vs. agriculture, a lot of competition for water and water rights. There are certain areas of the state that won’t be in agriculture because of constraints in water.”

“Most of the crop irrigation in the state is flood irrigation. It’s wasted water, not efficient. More farmers are looking at upgrades, ways to be more efficient. If they can do that, they can lease water back to cities.”

“Labor is a big issue for dairies. The same is true with produce fields. Work that isn’t glamorous. Farmers can’t get enough people to work the fields. Immigration is a huge issue for them.”

“Livestock is really big in the state and global warming will affect that. CSU is a really good source with that research information.”

“Ag is a great beat for data nerds. The USDA is a great source of information. I can find out how many maple syrup taps there are in the country. I really missed that during the government shutdown.”