Representative Ty Winter Op-Ed – “Demonstrating Rural Fairness in Colorado”

Demonstrating Greater Fairness in Rural Colorado: The Realities ofAgricultural Overtime Thresholds

By Representative Ty Winter

Colorado’s agricultural community is facing a growing, preventable crisis from policies that ignore the realities of farm work and overtime thresholds. This, paired with circumstances out of our control, such as skyrocketing input costs, unpredictable markets, and a fragile national labor market, has farm families facing an uncertain future. Where I come from, this debate isn’t theoretical; it’s about whether family farms can afford to keep the lights on. Right now, Colorado’s agricultural community is staring down a problem that never had to happen, driven by policies written with city schedules in mind, not the realities of the rural way of life.

Under current law, agricultural employers are, in general, required to pay overtime after 48 hours in a week, forcing farms to operate in ways never intended. It ignores a fundamental truth: farmers and ranchers do not operate on a 9-to-5. We work when the land tells us to. The weather rolls in when it wants. Crops ripen when they’re ready, and when it comes time to harvest, you don’t just clock out and come back tomorrow.

You get it done, or you lose your future. Flexibility is essential during harvest, yet current overtime thresholds limit that flexibility, and at its core, those hurting the worst from these limits are workers. Many agricultural workers rely on long hours during peak seasons to earn the income they need to support themselves and their families. When employers are forced to limit hours in order to survive,, workers see smaller paychecks.

At the same time, farmers are being hit from every direction. These farms aren’t large corporations; most are small, family-run operations. Colorado has more than 36,000 farms, and over 28,000 of them are family-owned. And we’re losing them to states that understand this rural-urban divide. Thousands of farms have left our state since 2017. That’s not just numbers on a page; those are our neighbors, communities, the clothes on our backs, and the food that we eat disappearing from our state.

Meanwhile, demand for ag products keeps climbing, and the pressure to produce more doesn’t let up. But my people in rural Colorado who are expected to meet that demand are being boxed in by rules that just don’t fit how growing food actually works. When small farms face rising overtime costs, they are left with choices no one wants to make: cut hours or cut production. Both choices, shrink paychecks.. To manage those costs, many farmers split workers into shifts to stay under the overtime threshold. The work still gets done, but workers lose hours and income.

We’ve seen how this plays out. In states like New York, California, and Oregon that have made similar changes, workers ended up with fewer hours and less pay, not more. This is what happens when a one-size-fits-all policy gets written from an urban perspective without listening to producers and ALL workers involved and is then applied to rural Colorado.

It just doesn’t work.

This is why legislation like SB26-121 matters. This bill adjusts the overtime threshold from 48 hours to 56, it’s not removing overtime, it’s adjusting to a solution that benefits workers and farms. The threshold in this bill will mean agricultural workers have the opportunity to work more hours, make more money, and still have time to spend with their families. This bill, by Representative Martinez and myself, is about bringing common sense back into the equation, responding to what workers and farms are so desperately asking for. Let me be clear, this bill was never about opposing fair wages or worker protections. It is actually quite the opposite. This is about making sure the policies that are passed here in Denver actually work for the people they’re supposed to help.

The agricultural industry is different, and it always has been, and we need policies that reflect that reality. If we continue to ignore this fact, we are going to continue losing farms, especially the small family farms that make up the backbone of rural Colorado.

At the end of the day, legislation like SB26-121 shouldn’t be complicated. We must listen to the folks who are closest to the land and ensure that the policy in this building actually works for them.

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Ty Winter, a Republican, represents District 47 in the Colorado House of Representatives. His district includes Las Animas, Baca, Prowers, Bent, Otero, Crowley and Kiowa counties, along with parts of Pueblo and Huerfano counties. Byron H. Pelton represents state Senate District 1, which includes all or part of Logan, Morgan, Phillips, Sedgwick, Washington, Weld, and Yuma counties.