On Tuesday, the 23de of August, during a tour of the new Spring Born green-growing greenhouse facility outside Silt, Gov. Jared Polis paused at one point to process what he was seeing. “Oh my goodness, that’s a lot of salad,” he said while clad like other visitors in head-to-toe in white coveralls to help keep contaminants from getting inside the facility. There, a 2.5-acre greenhouse is producing 3,000 pounds of lettuce a day.
The facility, which cost about $30 million to build and equip, is benefiting in part from a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan. But help has been coming from other sources, including one that Polis and state Rep. Matt Soper, R-Delta, toured the site in part to highlight. This year, Polis signed into law a bipartisan measure sponsored in the state House of Representatives by Soper and Rep. Dylan Roberts, D-Eagle, that Soper says benefits greenhouses used for commercial production by treating the business personal property as agricultural, personal property, meaning it’s not taxed for five years.
The tax provision applies in the case of equipment used in planting, growing, and harvesting and doesn’t apply to marijuana facilities, he said. Both Soper and Polis said the measure is a matter of fairness, treating indoor farming equipment the same way the equipment would be treated for tax purposes if it was used for agricultural production outside. “It’s really about equal treatment under the law,” Soper said.
Said Polis, “Now we’re treating indoor and outdoor agriculture the same way, advantageously, so that indoor producers can be confident making these major capital investments.”
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