Add cranberries to dairy when it comes to Wisconsin ag woes

Wisconsin farmers are undergoing some of the toughest times of any in the nation right now, particularly in 2 types of products that the state is well-known for – cranberries and dairy.

I’ll first talk about the cranberries, which is a major crop in central and western Wisconsin in particular, and media mentioned over the weekend that many cranberries are going to be dumped and/or put in storage to get prices up. That’s a big deal in Wisconsin, since our state produces 60% of the US’s cranberries, and because there are still a lot of berries from 2017 that have yet to be used.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of the tart fruit could be used as fertilizer or animal feed. Some of the glut could be donated to charities or sold overseas to keep it out of the U.S. marketplace.

“Basically, they’re going to destroy 25 percent of the crop,” said Paul Mitchell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison agricultural economist.

It’s something the growers, themselves, requested from the USDA through what’s called “volume regulation,” a rarely used federal order to deal with an oversupply of fruit.

This might not all go on the shelves

Like many other agricultural products in the US, the problems of low prices and oversupply have been made worse by the Trump Trade Wars and improved foreign competition.

China slapped a 40 percent tariff on American cranberries this year, up from 25 percent, according to growers.

“And even if Trump hadn’t screwed around with tariffs, some of these issues would still be there because the rest of the world is getting better at producing as well,” Mitchell said.

Canada and Chile, for example, have ramped up cranberry production with large, highly efficient bogs and improved varieties of fruit.

Cranberries are part of the list of products that the Trump Administration are subsidizing, but the $32.8 million that will be paid by Uncle Sam for nutrition programs is a fraction of what soybeans or even pistachios will get.

Wisconsin’s dairy farmers also continue to struggle against the economic problems of overproduction and plunging prices. After a minor rally at the end of October, prices have fallen again in November, with futures down more than 10% for dairy products over the last 2 months.

On top of the awful outlook, newly-updated statistics from the US Department of Agriculture show that 87 more dairy farms closed in Wisconsin in October, which is the most for one month in 7 ½ years. The new monthly total also means that 660 farms have closed in the last 12 months in the state, and more than 1,100 since the end of 2016.

We are in a full-fledged crisis and new Dem leaders like Gov-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul need to reverse the Walker and Schimel policies that deregulated factory farms and encouraged the type of overproduction that are driving out dairy producers, and causing cranberries to rot in storage.

And sorry Big Ag, but that probably requires stronger regulation and taxation against those of you who have acted in a way that has hurt the little guys in Wisconsin. And it needs to happen soon, or else there won’t be any little guys left.