OPINION: Wisconsin dairy farmers have been duped

For a farmer, getting the news that you no longer have a market for your product is devastating. I know — I got one of those letters a few months ago. It is especially problematic if you are a dairy farmer, since cows need to be milked every day. So, in April, when 75 Wisconsin farmers were notified by their milk buyer, Grassland Dairy Products, that they would no longer have a market, state government officials took notice....

...In 2003, the Wisconsin Legislature passed Act 235, a bill that limited the ability of local communities to oppose large farms...

...As the number of Wisconsin dairy farms has fallen from 14,265 to 9,230 over the past 10 years, those that remain have obviously gotten larger, much larger. The concentrated animal feeding operation, CAFO, is the preferred model for the future of dairy production in Wisconsin, as CAFO numbers have grown from 50 in 2000 to 252 in 2016....

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Ken Notes: I have a plan, call it CAFO`s for Wisconsin. I would require that all farms with over 1,000 head digest manure on site and pasteurize their effluent. At 165 degrees this manure becomes a marketable product valuable world wide. We get energy, jobs, and the milk the governor wants. Prices (my plan raises the cost of CAFO product slightly to make it competitive with smaller farms) and farmers are protected, and Wisconsin becomes a model for dairy farming worldwide....