Why CCGA Belongs to SWCA

Posted September 25, 2026

Colorado grows a little under two percent of America’s corn. That is the whole problem in one number, and the reason this association pays dues to a five-state council headquartered in Texas.

The Arithmetic of a Small Voice

In 2024 Colorado planted 1.46 million acres of corn. The national crop is planted on roughly 90 million. Iowa alone plants more than eight times what we do, and Illinois is not far behind. On yield the gap is just as plain: Colorado averaged 116 bushels an acre against a national average above 179, because a great deal of our corn is dryland and dryland corn in a semi-arid state is a different crop than corn in Iowa.

The same arithmetic runs through Washington. Colorado sends 8 members to a House of 435 and 2 senators to a Senate of 100, and only a handful of those seats represent serious farm country. When a farm bill is drafted, the room is sized by acres and by votes. A state with under two percent of the acres and under two percent of the House does not get a paragraph written for it by default.

None of that is a grievance. It is the starting position, and it is why going alone is not a strategy.

What SWCA Is

The Southwest Council of Agribusiness was formed in October 2006, built around extending and improving the 2002 farm bill. It is a coalition of commodity organizations, agribusinesses and lenders across five states — Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado — and its board is drawn largely from the commodity groups themselves. CCGA is the Colorado corn seat at that table.

Run the same congressional arithmetic on the coalition instead of the state. Those five states hold 58 House seats and 10 Senate seats. That is not a small voice. It is a bloc large enough that its regional concerns become national business, and it is built out of states that share a problem the Corn Belt does not have: heat, drought, declining aquifers, and dryland acres where a bad year is a total loss rather than a yield drag.

SWCA is represented in Washington by Combest, Sell & Associates, founded by former House Agriculture Committee Chairman Larry Combest and Tom Sell, who served as deputy chief of staff to the House Agriculture Committee. That is the practical difference between a comment letter and a meeting: the council’s representation knows which staffer drafts which title, and when the language is still open.

What the Affiliation Has Actually Delivered

Two Colorado examples, both concrete.

T-yields. Crop insurance transitional yields are the yield RMA assigns when a producer has no production history of their own, and Colorado’s were set far below comparable corn ground in other states — a disparity that made insurance worth less here for the same crop and the same risk. CCGA carried the problem to the SWCA board, and the council’s Washington representation took it to the Risk Management Agency directly. The numbers moved, and they moved for corn across Colorado — not for one county. To put a size on it, nonirrigated corn in Yuma County went from a T-yield of 43 bushels to 60, and irrigated from 204 to 210. That is one county’s share of a statewide adjustment, and it is exactly the kind of technical fix that never happens because somebody sent a letter.

It is worth saying plainly that the work was not finished. Several eastern Colorado counties were still carrying large disparities against comparable ground elsewhere after those adjustments. Progress, not victory — which is the honest description of most policy work.

Excessive heat. It was the excessive heat case made through SWCA that expanded Colorado’s disaster eligibility from 24 drought counties to statewide coverage. Every Colorado producer who filed a Supplemental Disaster Relief Program claim from outside those original 24 counties was able to do so because of that argument. That is a whole category of Colorado ground made eligible by a case a single state association would have struggled to make on its own.

What It Looks Like in Practice

At the 2026 annual meeting, CCGA President Jeff Self sat on the Commodity Panel alongside cotton, sorghum, wheat, rice, peanut and corn leaders from across the region, and raised the regulatory pressure Colorado growers are spending their year fighting. The same agenda carried the economists who build the models Congress leans on, and a staff panel with people from both agriculture committees and both sides of each.

Colorado corn had a seat in all of it. Not as a guest — as a member.

The Point

Alone, Colorado is a rounding error in a national farm bill. In a coalition of five states that share our conditions, we are part of something Congress has to account for. The affiliation does not make our acres bigger. It makes them count.

More about SWCA membership →
Who has gone to bat for Colorado corn →

Tom Sell, co-founder of the firm that represents SWCA in Washington, is the Republican nominee for Texas’ 19th Congressional District in the November 3, 2026 general election, per Ballotpedia. The CCGA board has voted to pledge this association’s support to his candidacy, which we state plainly here rather than leave implied.

Acreage and yield figures are USDA’s. T-yield figures are RMA’s, as reported at the time of the adjustment. CCGA administers no USDA program.