Its peak harvest for a lot of crops throughout Wisconsin.
On top of the annual challenges of things like weather and equipment, some farmers are also now feeling the impacts of tariffs.
Tariffs are bringing some benefits as well as some pain to Wisconsin farmers.
“What you have right now is you have farmers in the heat of harvest season, and they've had a big mixed bag,” said Brian Reisinger. Reisinger grew up on a farm in southern Wisconsin that his family still owns and has written about and worked on public policy at both the state and federal level.
Reisinger explains that on one hand, trade practices have kept prices down, hurting farmers—and the tariffs have led to negotiations that have opened up markets for things like American beef to other countries.
On the other, it’s also caused some countries to stop importing American agriculture—like China not purchasing soybeans, which is a major crop for Wisconsin.
“They've had some trade deals that were negotiated in a tougher fashion coming through that maybe mean opportunity for them, and they have some trade deals that are still stuck in trade disputes that are creating challenges for them,” said Reisinger. “The honest answer that I hear from a lot of farmers that it's a little bit of both. They've got a little bit of hope and a little bit of fear.”
He calls this a “belt tighten year” for farmers as they wait to see how tariffs and other challenges play out.
The number of smaller, family-owned farms has been on the decline in the U.S. for decades.
“That pressure to get bigger or get out is just persistent, and it's because the economic opportunity they have exists in these old markets that only have so much economic opportunity, only so big of a pie to go around,” said Reisinger. “To keep your share that pie, you just got to keep getting bigger and bigger, otherwise you kind of get pushed off the table.”
Where there’s challenges, Reisinger also says theirs opportunities, especially now as more people become interested in knowing where their food comes from.
“You see them [farmers markets] in more communities, more medium sized cities and small towns and rural communities having farmers markets. We need to continue that. We need to continue supporting local businesses, your local butcher shops, fruit stands, online marketplaces and Co Ops, all that kind of stuff,” said Reisinger. “If this hunger to have food where we know where it comes from can continue to grow, that can drive more economic opportunity.”
Reisinger also advocates for policy change.
The Farm Bill is one of the most significant pieces of legislation meant to support farmers and agricultural in the U.S. It’s supposed to be updated every five years, but the one passed in 2018 just keeps being extended.
“Everybody on the left, the right, inside farming, outside farming has something they don't like about our farm programs, and that's because we have a lot of programs that don't work anymore. Some of them are contradictory to one another, and some of them have become prone to favoritism and abuse,” said Reisinger.
He’d like to see government policy that focuses on research and development for farms of all sizes, fair markets, and better functionality of subsidy programs.
“I've been saying we need to do a bipartisan family farm moonshot, where we go through these programs and figure out which ones are working and which ones aren't, and really reform them so that taxpayers can say they know where their money's going to and that it's to shore up the uncertainties around weather and other things that helps secure our food supply,” said Reisinger.
Reisinger is the author of “Land Rich, Cash Poor: My Family’s Hope and the Untold History of the Disappearing American Farmer”.
He’ll be speaking this Friday, September 26th at 5:15 p.m. at Timekeeper Distillery in Wausau as part of the Central Wisconsin Book Festival.
