Colorado Corn

By Aldo Svaldi
The Denver Post

YUMA — Corn prices have more than tripled over the past few years, and wheat has more than doubled, but don't tell residents of Colorado's plains that they are in a boom.

"Maybe this isn't as good as we thought it would be," Phil Asmus, owner of Farmer Power & Equipment Inc. in Yuma, said of record grain prices.

Corn prices have crossed $7 a bushel this year, and wheat is more than $8, far above levels producers dreamed possible just a few years ago.

But oil is around $140 a barrel, land prices are escalating and almost everything it takes to grow corn and wheat is getting more expensive.

"The price of corn is finally where it should be," said Byron Weathers, president of the Colorado Corn Growers Association, who makes no apologies.

Weathers and other farmers in Yuma County struggled through tough years of raising corn and getting under $2 a bushel. Like many in rural America, he took side jobs to get by.

If any place in Colorado booms because of higher grain prices, Yuma County, the state's leading producer of corn, should be it.

But residents say that while times are good, the crosscurrents of an unsettled economy and rising costs leave them vulnerable.

Unlike some farm towns, buildings on Yuma's main streets aren't the boarded up, dilapidated relics of a past prosperity.

The town has a year-old hospital built with revenue bonds and rebuilt its school two years ago. But it can't attract a dry-goods store, leaving locals raising funds to create their own.

Older farmers are using their surpluses to pay down debt while younger ones are investing in new equipment to replace aging machines, said Bob Carpio, president of Colorado Community Bank's Yuma branch.

Stories of lavish excesses told at the other end of the state in the petroleum patch won't be heard here.

"The farmers' wives aren't all going down to Denver to get manicures," Carpio joked.

Unlike the many banks in the state struggling with rising delinquencies, Carpio said no loans at his branch are more than 30 days past due. There were only 27 foreclosures in the county last year.

But the good times can't match the late 1960s and 1970s, when the introduction of irrigation and high crop prices created a boom that transformed the county.

Unemployment remains in the 2 percent range, and the county's population hasn't changed much in the past five years — 9,708 in 2002 and 9,666 in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Contrast that with the energy patch. Garfield County's population grew from 46,863 to 53,631 over the same period, and Mesa County's rose from 122,156 to 139,082.

Stagnant population growth and low unemployment actually complicate efforts to diversify the county's economy.

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