Kevin J. Miyazaki
Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese.
Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese in Dodgeville says a scare over federal funding has left them ‘rattled.’
Andy Hatch began working at Uplands Cheese in 2007 as a cheesemaker.
Seven years later, he and his wife and another family bought the Dodgeville dairy farm from its previous generation of owners. Hatch says he wanted to raise his family on a dairy farm and viewed cheesemaking as a way to make that dream financially viable.
Beyond that “selfish reason,” cheese sales into large urban markets, he later realized, help bring wealth back home to rural Iowa County: “We’re a very small business, but we spend over a million dollars just in our neighborhood.”
The dairy was told in February that two of its federal grants for capital investments and manure management, totaling “mid-six figures,” had been revoked. Later they were told the money would still be available. The scare has left them “rattled,” says Hatch, noting that federal funding makes facility maintenance and renovations needed for small producers like Uplands Cheese more manageable.
“If those programs don’t continue in the future, it’s going to create even more difficulties for farms trying to sustain or invest, or bring on the next generation,” says Hatch.
Family farms in Wisconsin have struggled in recent years and closed at an alarming rate. From 2017 to 2022, 10% of Wisconsin’s farms went out of business; more than 2,800 or 30% of dairy farms shuttered. Both rates are significantly higher than the national average over the same period.
As President Donald Trump pursues tariffs, regulatory change and federal funding cuts, those numbers will likely rise, some experts say.
“You got avian flu, on top of climate change, on top of low commodity prices, and now we have these tariffs. And then you’re gonna yank out what little support there is left,” says John Peck, a Brooklyn, Wisconsin, farmer, Madison College economics professor, and executive director of Madison-based nonprofit Family Farm Defenders. “You’d have to be a major miracle worker to somehow survive all those calamities hitting you at once. It’s like a perfect storm for farm foreclosure.”
Family farms have been in trouble for a variety of reasons. Prices for commodity crops have plummeted, and Congress has been unable to update the farm bill, a key source of price and income support for such crops, since 2018. Climate change has made extreme weather events more frequent, cost of production remains higher than pre-pandemic levels, and fertilizer costs are rising.
And federal farm subsidies continue to disproportionately benefit larger, wealthier farmers, according to the Brookings Institution. But it is the smaller farms that will be most vulnerable to the potential market volatility under Trump, says Anthony Pahnke, an expert in agrarian politics and San Francisco State University professor.
“[Since 1981], prices have gone up and down quite a lot, and farmers have very little protection from market volatility,” Pahnke says. “That means bigger operations can absorb market fluctuations more than small scale operations.”
Pahnke says the president’s tariffs, federal funding cuts and potential renegotiation of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal could all spell trouble for family farms. On April 2, Trump announced a baseline 10% tariff on all countries, with tariffs on some countries, like China, reaching as high as 54%.
Canada provides around 85% of potassium fertilizer, also known as potash, used annually in the U.S., according to a February study from researchers at Ohio State University and the University of Illinois. Were Trump’s proposed 25% tariff on Canada to go through, Canadian potash prices could increase by more than $100 per ton — facing backlash, the president later reduced the proposed potash tariff to 10%.
Countertariffs also pose a significant risk to farmers’ export income. China has pledged tariffs on U.S. soybeans and corn, crops representing the highest ($27.37 billion) and second-highest ($18.72 billion) U.S. agricultural exports by value. Corn and soybeans are the highest and second-highest most harvested crops in Wisconsin, according to USDA data.
Like the federal grants Upland Farms received for capital investments and manure management, many federal funding opportunities for agriculture operate as reimbursement programs.
When that funding disappears without warning, says Shelly Rothman of Appleton-based nonprofit Foxhead Regenerative Agriculture, “A lot of cash was already spent, and that cuts into a farm’s already tight budget.”
The federal government has cut other funds affecting farmers too. The USDA on March 7 axed its local food purchase program, which from 2023-24 provided Wisconsin farmers with nearly $4 million in purchases. Kriss Marion, owner-operator of Circle M Farm in Blanchardville, says the “devastating” disruption takes away a reliable market for farmers to sell into, and will hurt access to fresh, healthy food in local communities.
Current federal funding priorities “definitely will” increase the rate of family farm closures in Wisconsin, Marion predicts, adding that stricter immigration policies will hurt Wisconsin’s dairies, in particular. Around 70% of Wisconsin’s dairy workforce is immigrants, primarily from Mexico and Central America.
Hans Breitenmoser, a Merrill dairy farmer, says reducing or cutting off federal funds could also damage farmers’ relationships with lenders. In 2023, the banking industry supplied 38% of all farm loans in the U.S., according to the American Banking Association.
“How anxious are they to get in bed with that farmer when they know that the federal government, that they used to be able to rely on for these funds, may or may not come through?” Breitenmoser says.
Courtesy Circle M Market Farm
Kriss Marion digging potato rows on Circle M Farm.
Kriss Marion digging potato rows on Circle M Farm in Blanchardville. She says the current federal funding priorities out of D.C. threaten family farms.
Further changes are on the horizon. Congress has until Sept. 30 to update the farm bill, which could substantially change farming subsidies and commodity pricing. It’s also likely the Trump administration will continue to fight a federal judge’s order to reinstate fired probationary federal workers, whose absence, Breitenmoser notes, will affect farmers looking for federal funding.
“A lot of contracts now going forward are unable to be written because staff is sitting there short of help — because some of their help got fired — and getting input from Washington saying ‘Thou shalt not write any contracts,’” Breitenmoser says.
Amid the brewing trade war, Trump’s message to farmers was to prepare to sell crops inside the U.S., adding, “Have fun!” Some economists called the prospect misguided.
The National Rural Health Association found in 2024 that farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general public. Though risk factors vary substantially, researchers at the USDA and University of Illinois found in a 2022 study that farmers grapple with unique factors “that threaten their mental health, including inconsistent work schedules, fluctuating commodity prices, shrinking labor pools, uncertain government policies, and unpredictable environmental conditions.”
Facing funding shortfalls, farmers will “suffer in silence,” Pahnke says.
“Who do you complain to? Our communities are devastated. People are going out of the profession. Our churches are closing. Our schools are closing, our small towns are disappearing, and so you’re alone.”
The Wisconsin Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988, or by visiting this link: chat.988lifeline.org.
