The yeasty mix in Clovis and Portales is creating a vigorous economy

New Mexico Business Journal, June, 1995 by Joy Waldron

Monday morning. Roosevelt county in southeastern New Mexico. A dairy farmer walks through a barn to check the milking machines and catches the 6 o'clock crack-of-dawn farm news.

"This is KSEL Radio with Price Allan for the daily farm report. Let's start with the weather. Then we'll move into the prices, the futures, the animals and the crops . . ."

Curry and Roosevelt counties support their farm and ranching industries, and KSEL of Portales is just one example of how the closely intertwined communities of Clovis and Portales encourage a broad-based economy.

Cutting edge reporting. Then again, Curry and Roosevelt counties have been on the cutting edge for decades. Nearly 40 years ago a farmer might have tuned into a local station and caught the newest cuts from rock-and-roll singer Buddy Holly, who recorded most of his hits at the Norman Petty Studio in Clovis. Holly, a Lubbock native, couldn't find anyone to back him in Texas, but he found success with the "Clovis sound" in music. So did other stars who followed his lead.

In the shifting sands of 1990s economic change, Curry-Roosevelt depends on Cannon Air Force Base, Eastern New Mexico University, farms, ranches and local businesses to sustain jobs for its residents. Working actively to support those mainstays, the economic planners have added dairy farming as a growing core business for the region.

Major Growth in Dairy

"Things are looking good for us," says owner-broker Gayla Brumfield of Colonial Real Estate in Clovis. "We've been working on getting the dairy industry built up, and it's gone very well. We've gotten several new dairies to move into county, and we're working to add milk and cheese processing. Processing plants employ typically 2540 people per plant."

The Clovis-Curry County area was already agriculture-based, Brumfield explains. "That's our mainstay: we're a large wheat grower, corn grower and we have a lot of feed lots. So it was a natural to have dairy - it blends in with what we're already doing. A lot of the dairies were looking to move out of California. We promoted our area, as did all of eastern New Mexico. We think we've done a good job."

Dottie Hoxie agrees. Hoxie, who is executive director of the Clovis/Curry County Chamber of Commerce, calls the economic climate "very healthy."

"We have a growing economy," she says. "The agriculture industry is expanding with the addition of the dairy industry in the last five years. We've created additional agriculture production in the grains and hay."

The dairy business benefits the communities in both jobs and taxes. "Each one of the cows is taxed at a substantial rate, higher than feed cows," she explains, "so each one generates additional property tax. The dairy farmers pay that tax, and also pay for their equipment, the stainless steel. A property tax on that goes to the county. The tax money is used for all your infrastructure, building roads, schools, buildings."

Population Is Increasing

Clovis has seen a spurt of growth of about 5,000 since the 1990 census, Hoxie says. "I attribute it to the combination of agriculture industry and expansion of Cannon Air Force Base. Over a period of two years the incremental expansion brought us up from 4,000 to 5,300. So the total population is now 35,000 - some of those live in Clovis, Portales, or out in the country."

Real estate has boomed because of the base expansion. "There were 150 homes built in Portales and 200 homes built in Clovis, and since that time 360 homes were built in Clovis as part of the base. Cannon was selected to be the home of all the F-111s, so all those planes and personnel came into Cannon. The F-111 will be phased out and retired, and we'll be getting F-16s here. We'll lose a few personnel this year, but we'll still be ahead."

Eastern New Mexico University (ENMU) in Portales is a stable hedge on changing times, as is the Clovis Community College, which she says is "growing by leaps and bounds, and is just outstanding."

Curry, one of the smaller counties in New Mexico, consistently ranks No. 1 or 2 in cash receipts derived from the production of corn, wheat, sorghum and cattle, which demonstrates the significance of the agriculture industry here.

Good News from Portales

"No question but that it's looking up," says Dallan Sanders, referring to the Clovis-Portales economy. Sanders, the executive director of the Portales-based Board of Economic Development, which is funded by county, city and private sources, says a diverse economy supports the towns. He recites a litany of economic contributors.

"In this 12,000-population town, we have a 3,800-student university, and a giant refinery of ethanol that produces 95 percent of the oxygenated fuel for Albuquerque's gasoline. There are 50 employees in that facility, which refines natural products like corn in a brewing process to produce ethanol, and we're anticipating value-added products to that plant. In addition, there's Southwest Canners, a Coca-Cola canning and bottling plant. We provide bottling for Blue Sky sodas of Santa Fe. And I haven't even mentioned peanuts, which we're known for - the Valencia peanut is a multi-million-dollar crop for the county.