Analysis

Even a quick look at the available data raises serious questions about the OSMP Agricultural
Bidding process. Digging into the details turns such questions into serious concerns about the
legitimacy, objectivity and transparency of the process. While it is unclear why the bidding
process is being subverted, (several ideas are listed later in this document) it is certainly clear
that the process is being mishandled. Even if the 11 properties listed here are the worst of all
possible examples of the process, there is a big enough pattern here to warrant serious
demands for changes to the process.

It has long been an open secret among farmers in the Boulder area that OSMP staff knows
who will win a bid before the process even starts - this does not create a level playing field for
all. One currently lessee told me that greater than 90% of decisions are probably pre-
determined.

Although I was reluctant to believe such rumors, my experience has confirmed those opinions.
Something is amiss.

A Legitimate Public Bidding Process

There are a number of federal and state laws governing any public bidding process, as well as
principles of good governance that the Citizens of Boulder will demand that their officials
follow. The “state of the art” would be an open bidding process where members of the public
could see and comment on the available options, this would create a competitive environment
where farmers will have an incentive to please the public and will strive to outdo one another in
areas such as sustainability and stewardship, however Boulder chooses to employ a closed
bid process. Nevertheless they still have an obligation to behave in an objective and
transparent manner - once decisions have been made in a closed bid process, the bids
become a part of the public record and should be made available to anyone who requests it.
(After three years of repeated requests to see winning bids I was forced to escalate my request
to a supervisor, John Potter, before I was able to see the proposals that were being chosen
over mine. John was very helpful and had me the requested documents the same day I first
requested them from him)

An objective and transparent process (regardless of whether it is open or closed) requires that
a “Request for Proposals” be published which lists a number of criteria (along with the weight
given to each criterion) that will form the basis of the decision. This is to avoid the situation
where the criteria are defined after the bids are submitted. In such a situation staff can look
over the submitted proposals and find criteria that would justify their decision post-hoc. This is
exactly what has happened to me each time I have a proposal denied. In explaining their
decisions, staff has made reference to criteria that were never published. They City does in fact
publish the required “Request for Proposals” and each one has a section which says

“EVALUATION OF BIDS:

The following criteria will be used to evaluate agricultural bids:

The problem is that it’s hard to imagine, given the available evidence, that these criteria are
actually being used to to evaluate bids.

The Goals of OSMP Agricultural Leasing

Despite my outstanding credentials, education, experience and track record, I have lost every
bid I have put in for a total of 11 properties in the last three years, however this is not just an
issue of “sour grapes” where I am complaining because the outcome of the bidding process
did not go my way - there is a lot more at stake here than the future of my farm or even
ensuring a fair process for the farmers who are bidding for land access. The people of the City
of Boulder, over the last 100 years, have consistently extended their good faith to approve tax
increases for the purchase of public land with certain specific goals in mind. Although these
goals have evolved over time, the public has tasked the office of OSMP to responsibly manage
their land in a manner consistent with the public good.

In order to determine the public’s will for the open space properties, the city recently invested a
lot of money, time and human resources on a variety of public processes. One resulting
document was the the OSMP Agricultural Resources Management Plan. In addition to a strong
focus on ecological and sustainability goals, this well-researched document outlines the
following priorities:

• To encourage and support the next generation of farmers and ranchers

• To expand the variety of agriculture operations on OSMP lands as appropriate with a focus on
diversified vegetable/pastured livestock farming and micro dairies.

• To introduce new operations based on market needs, working closely with existing farmers
and ranchers

• To avoid impairment of existing successful operations

• To “Update business practices... to maintain fairness in value, transparency in process, and

fiscal responsibility.”

This analysis of the data will shown that OSMP staff have very seriously failed the public in
achieving these goals.

My experience as a case study

Of all the bids I’ve submitted, which are reviewed above, all of them have ultimately gone to
only 3 bidders: Out of 11 properties 7 properties went to Steve Penner and Keith Bateman. I’d
like to look at those cases first:

Awards to Conventional Farmers

Steve Penner and Keith Bateman are each large-scale conventional farmers managing
thousands of acres. Each of them has a home farm located near Lafayette (at some distance
from the properties in question) It’s useful to note that these farmers are already well
established, Kieth Bateman mentions in one of his bids that he is currently farming over 3,000
acres. The Penners, similarly, farm well over 2,000 acres. The addition (or not) of a hundred
acre parcel here or there will have little impact on these large-scale farmers. Each farmer
submitted bids that could fairly be described as “low effort” - usually with one or two sentence
answers to questions, no maps or diagrams, very scant on details. Their approach to
ecological concerns would be shocking to the average citizen of Boulder, proposing in one
case to apply a very serious neurotoxin, which is toxic to fish, directly into city-owned
waterways (remember this bid won.) At best they propose to do the bare minimum required by
city policy and they don’t even bother to give lip-service to issues of sustainability within their
proposals. With no aspect of environmental good, little local food marketing, and no innovative
or diversified production, how did their bids win? Since these bids have not even been high
dollar (in one case they bid about half of the amount I bid) it’s not clear, other than their
ongoing relationship with the OSMP office, why these bids would stand out. They do not hit
any of the high points that the Agricultural Resource Managment Plan outlines. Ask yourself:

Do these decisions:

•“Encourage and support the next generation of farmers and ranchers”?

NO - the opposite - they side with the status quo against the success of the next generation.

Do these decisions:

• “Expand the variety of agriculture operations on OSMP lands as appropriate with a focus on
diversified vegetable/pastured livestock farming and micro dairies”?

• “Introduce new operations based on market needs”?

NO - they instead decrease the variety and expand the commercial, mono-cultural approach.

Do these decisions:

• “Maintain fairness in value, transparency in process, and fiscal responsibility”?

NO - clearly these decisions have been unfair, doggedly un-transparent and in one case
resulted in HALF the value to public coffers.

Finally, had OSMP staff picked a farmer like me for any of the 7 properties we are discussing,
would that decision have resulted in “impairment of existing successful operations”?

NO - these large farmers would not have been hurt - they would have continued on as before
farming HUGE areas (thousands of acres) of public land at below market rates and continued
to benefit from public investments without meaningfully contributing to any of the goals stated
in the Agricultural Resource Managment plan listed above.

So why are they receiving preferential treatment over small operations like ours who are doing
everything that the City is trying to promote through the Agricultural Resource Managment
Plan? As much as I appreciate the legacy of “old families” don’t they have enough advantages
already? Inheriting land, equipment and livestock? Doesn’t it seems to be at odds with Civil
Rights legislation to award a bid to an “old family” over an immigrant like me? Doesn’t that put
the city at risk of lawsuits?

Isn’t it also irresponsible for the City to aggregate all the land in the hands of so few? Doesn’t
that create a risky situation where one or two farmers (who run slim margins, rely on scale and
are tied to commodity prices) going under could create a real system shock?

When bids are repeatedly given to the same few farmers who put forth low-effort, low-dollar
bids that are entirely incompatible with goals of sustainability and local food production, it calls
into question the integrity of the system and reflects poorly on our city.

Awards to Lightroot Farm

The case of Lightroot farm is a bit different. Unlike other winning bidders they have excellent
sustaintainablity and credibility. In fact - in many ways they are just like our farm, Jacob
Springs. They also espouse exactly the type of farming that the city seeks to encourage. Giving
the bid to Lightroot farm is a step in the right direction - however - without taking anything
away from the wonderful work of Cameron and Daphne at Lighroot farm the bid process here
was still not handled properly. Lightroot farm began operating just over 3 years ago, ours,
Jacob Springs was the only farm milking cows within 15 miles of Boulder. We were
encouraged by their arrival, and sought to make them feel very welcome! Our raw milk has
been sold out for years - so we actively contacted all the people on our waiting list to let them
know that Lightroot was an option, we lent equipment to Lightroot and sent our trained
workers to help them.

In may ways, the fact that both farms are in a position to be forced to compete against each
other for OSMP land is an unfortunate symptom of years of bad or lazy decisions by the
OSMP Ag leasing office. Since the OSMP staff have long been playing favorites and taking a
“winner take all” approach, giving thousands of acres of farmland to the same few conventional
farmers without regard to the bidding process, innovative, market-oriented and diversified
operations have had no way to expand and are forced to compete over the scraps left behind
by the big conventional farmers. Small farms are far less land hungry and far more productive
per acre than the conventional ones (in both dollar terms and food production) if the city would
have been running a fair and transparent bid process following their own published criteria
there would be no problem now - with over 15,000 acres of farmland in city hands there’s
enough land for all of us to operate (including the existing commercial farmers)!

Without wanting to criticize Lightroot farm - we still believe that an open and transparent
bidding process between two “sustainable” farms needs to be structured so that decisions are
made objectively and fairly - and that has not been the case. Consider the reasons given as to
why Lightroom’s bid was chosen over ours: We were told “They needed it more”… “We felt
that they were farther along” and that they had the edge in “Experience & Equipment.” yet
each of these claims does not hold up to even a basic understanding of the facts:

Need
On it’s face, it’s absurd to claim both that any one party has the “greater need” and is “farther
along”. But it is probably true that in financial terms Lightroot farm is in a more vulnerable
position financially, (since they don’t own any land or all the equipment needed to manage it,
are not as highly diversified as we are and are fairly new on the scene.) However the issue of
need is not a valid criterion in the case of these specific bids, since among the published
criteria for the properties that they were awarded bids were required to show, not their need
but their financial ability to meet the demands of the proposal. In other words, a winning
bidder should be able to show their financial health and not their need.

Of the two farms, perhaps we had the stronger financial ability to pay, and by the admission of
staff we were punished for not having demonstrated greater financial need. In previous bids,
however, where need was a published criterion (must “Show the benefit of the property to the
bidder’s existing agricultural operation”) we lost to established farms with clearly less need.
Does the city wish to support farms with financial stability or who are in need? Do the
published bid criteria matter at all? - Ironically Jacob Springs Farm is the only farm mentioned
that can show both a strong ability to pay (through the financial success of our African
agribusiness ventures) and strong need (since we have very little land available to us in Boulder
County.)

Equipment
As evidenced by their bid, Lightroot farm does not own all the needed equipment and would
need to hire out the hay-baling work. By contrast, our farm has everything needed. (one of the
published criteria - remember- was “ability to meet equipment requirements.”) So how could
anyone make the claim that their bid was superior to ours in regard to equipment? They literally
state in their proposal that they “hire out custom baling… at some point in the future we may
purchase our own baler.”

Lightroot farm doesn’t own a tractor, baler or bale wagon. All of which we own - (our proposal
also includes a full set of backup equipment!) Lightroot proposes to use animal power, which is
wonderful. Yet even Amish farms in this country, which typically benefit from a large labor pool,
institutional knowledge and community sourced equipment, on average manage only 20 acres
of hay using animal draft and only rarely go above 40 acres. Yet city staff have now granted
Lightroot a total of 157 acres in a very short period of time!

The fact that any employee would claim that we are at a disadvantage in equipment reveals
either that they are aware that they have no stronger point to rely on (“grasping at straws”) - or
that they didn’t even read the bids. Lightroot has some equipment, but does not have all the
needed equipment and our farm does.

Experience and “Success in Agricultural Endeavors”

The comments on “experience” and “we felt that they were farther along” run along the same
lines:

We have been in business here in Boulder three times as long as they have. Lightroot farm
owns no land, houses, barns, or infrastructure (which we own). They also farm less acreage,
and have a less diverse operation, no vegetable CSA, fewer livestock, (fewer beef cattle, 1/5
the laying chickens, no meat chickens, no turkeys, no geese, no hogs, lambs or goats, no meat
CSA, no fruit, herb or mushroom production etc..) We have three times the staff that they do,
we also provide housing for our staff, and this is critically important in the ability to expand.
Again - our intention is not to slander Light root farm - simply to illustrate that the reasons
given by OSMP staff don’t make any sense.

The only area in which Lightroot Farm exceeds our farm in scale is in the number of dairy cattle
(their 12 cows to our 5). This is because they are less diversified than we are. Yet to fault us
for having fewer dairy cattle when we’ve been so consistently and improperly denied land is
like stealing a man’s shoes and blaming him for being barefoot. Dairying requires contiguous
land. The cows have to be able to walk from the fields to a suitably equipped milking barn.
Since the city owns all the farmland on three sides of us, and the city has consistently passed
over our superior bids, we simply don’t have the ability to responsibly expand our dairy without
turning it into a feedlot. So we have expanded in other ways, including into the cut flower area.

Looking at experience raises even greater questions of OSMP staff. Did they even read the
bids? Cameron and Daphne do have experience, however arguably, we have more. We began
working for other farms and interning in 1989, they started 10 years later in 1999. In 1996, 4
years before they even began to farm, Andre had already reached the level of managing
hundreds of cattle and thousands of acres of BLM land at the Deep Springs Ranch in
California. Our farm has been profitable for years and we have managed to purchase our own
property with no debt and all the needed equipment solely through the success of our
agricultural endeavors, both here and in Africa. Andre is a frequent speaker and lecturer on
sustainable and regenerative agriculture and regularly travels around the world to consult with
agricultural projects. Cameron and Daphne at Lighroot farm are wonderful farmers, but how
can any “area expert” make the claim that they are “farther along” than we are in “agricultural
experience & past performance in agricultural endeavors”?

Any analysis of experience must take into account what is being proposed, in our case,
extensive experience managing vegetable fields as large as 6 acres. We annually cut hay on
over 65 acres, they hire out parts of the job on less acrage. We have extensive experience in
flood irrigation going back to 1989 and a formal college education in Water Resource
Engineering. If they have any experience in this critical type of irrigation it is not mentioned in
the proposal, it is doubtful since they have only been here in this county for just over three
years.

Working With Others

Like it or not, OSMP have become the big player in Boulder agriculture - by buying up all the
available land, they have become an outsize player in the process. This means that the city has
a strong responsibility to ensure that their decisions don’t negatively impact other farmers. If
the staff were to take seriously the charge to:

• Introduce new operations… working closely with existing farmers and ranchers

• To avoid impairment of existing successful operations

Why would they act so blatantly and aggressively against us? They awarded Lightroot, whose
base of operations is 13 miles away, not one, but four parcels of land (3 at Hunter Kolb plus
Aweida) all within 600 yards of our farm, while denying us, within a period of 3 years, any of
11 parcels of land all within a mile of us. We want Lightroot to get land, but we feel the
decisions should be made objectively.

Not only did OSMP staff fail to work “closely with existing farmers and ranchers” like us to
‘avoid impairment of existing successful operations,” not only did they totally fail to “encourage
and support the next generation of farmers and ranchers” like us, it would appear that they
have been actively and aggressively working to deny us the opportunity to expand, and
directly challenging our segment of the market (which is wide open - there are no other dairy
farms anywhere else in Boulder) by locating our only competition directly across the street from
us, and giving them the benefit of all the suitable land in the area. Even if, by some fluke, their
bid was deemed to be superior, wouldn’t it make sense to award us with one or two of the
smaller parcels? Rather the Hunter-Kolb and Aweida decisions, like all the others,
demonstrates a disregard for the the reasonable demands of the public, disregard for the
OSMP’s own Agricultural Resources Managment Plan, disregard for the OSMP’s own
published criteria, and for basic standards of objectivity and transparency in a public process.

The data we have seen on the bidding process clearly betrays each of the stated goals of the
Agricultural Resource Managment plan. It raises the question that the entire process of public
engagement was all for show. It means that the countless hours and substantial investment of
dollars the city spent are just a waste. All the hours holding public hearings all the time spent
soliciting and receiving public comments are for nothing- all the outreach and the events are a
waste of our money and our time. Hiring musicians, printing colorful displays, catering
appetizers and drinks. Hiring consultants to help with outreach, giving people stickers to vote
for their priorities and markers to write down their hopes and ideas - all this is undermined
when the bid process is subverted and the VAST majority of the land is automatically directed,
not to the bids which best represent the overwhelming desires of the public for sustainability
and environmental stewardship, nor for local food production- but instead the bids are
awarded to the favored few that are friendly with the city staff.

I have only ever received positive feedback on my bids. Outside area experts that I have
consulted (while removing identifying information from bid proposals) have acknowledged that
my bids were excellent and better than the winning bids in every case. Even City staff have had
similar responses to my bids, I was told by OSMP staff that my bids were “good” or “very
good” multiple times - once I was even told that my bid was “the best we’ve ever seen”.
Reading between the lines I cannot escape the implication that the bids themselves are not the
basis for the decision - the bids are are irrelevant since the “fix” is already in.

Putting it all together:

These issues are problematic for two, equally important reasons:

First, subverting the bidding process is in bad faith to all the farmers who invest their time and
efforts to submit proposals for the management of public land.

The available information confirms rumors that decisions are made prior to the bidding
process. This paints a picture of a staff who uses personal bias to make decisions while the bid
process is used as a cover for giving the properties to whomever they want. (see this video in
which Lauren Kolb tells an interviewer that a certain farm, while not leasing land now - will do
so in the future: https://youtu.be/1r29fkVeKnU?t=57 - this interview is happening more than 6
month before the bidding season - indicating that they OSMP office considers the bid process
to be a mere formality)

By consistently (and illegally) ignoring their own published criteria, and consistently justifying
their decisions post-facto with ad-hoc reference to unpublished criteria. Staff are clearly and
improperly changing the rules mid-stream - ignoring fair practices and operating without
transparency. This is a system that is vulnerable to both implicit and explicit bias on the part of
staff and is unfair to all who participate in the process.

Second and more importantly: The OSMP bidding process subverts the will of the people of
Boulder who have consistently extended their good faith to approve tax increases for the
purchase of public land. The public has tasked the office of OSMP to responsibly manage their
land in a manner consistent with the public good.

Possible Explanations and Factors Contributing to the Observed Behavior:

• Giving land leases to friends (Possible corruption?)

• Managing land for the convenience of the staff rather than the best interests of the
community or the policy of the city and it’s citizens

• Illegally favoring “traditional farm families” over immigrants (probable violation of Civil Rights
Law)

• Black-listing/downgrading farmers that don’t fit their unconsciously biased profile of what a
farmer looks like.

• Implicit bias against minorities or foreigners like us?

• The fix is in far in advance, the staff knows who they want and subverts the bidding process
by cherry-picking bid criteria to favor their desired outcome

• Improperly using a number of unpublished, unvalidated and unfair criteria in making land
allocation decisions possibly including gossip and rumors of unknown derivation - without
giving an opportunity to respond.