MONTE VISTA — Research Associate at the San Luis Valley Research Center Caroline Gray was impressed with the diversity of this year’s Ag Conference at the Ski-High building.

The 2020 Southern Rocky Mountain Agricultural Conference & Trade Fair ran from Tuesday-Thursday, which completed its 38th annual event.

Gray, who has been attending the conference for nine years in a row, was impressed with the diversity of the 2020 version.

“This year, we decided to mix up the topics,” Gray said. “Typically, we do one day for potatoes, one day for grain and one day for water, but we kind of interspersed all of the different topics because we wanted to get the full attendance for all three days.”

Gray said the conference’s overall theme this year was water, and Tuesday there were climatologists, water specialists and a round-table discussion, talking about water-use efficiency in the San Luis Valley.

“And I think that is one of the most important factors of any grower or rancher is water availability and I thought that was a big highlight.”

Gray said she thought Thursday morning’s hemp grower panel was impressive.

“They discussed the challenges with hemp production,” she said. “I thought that it was exceptional in the fact that we had a lot of audience interaction, a lot of good questions and a lot of good discussions because I feel like hemp is a really new industry here and there are a lot more questions than knowledge, so I think that was very beneficial.

“There was a lot of audience participation and questions.”