Wisconsin’s agricultural economy has been growing even with a steep decline in the number of dairy farms, a new report from University of Wisconsin-Madison shows.
Altogether, farms and agriculture businesses in the state generated $104.8 billion in economic activity in 2017, according to the new data released Tuesday and published once every five years.
That’s up nearly 19% from $88.3 billion in 2012, despite the loss of several thousand dairy farms, many of them small, family-run businesses.
The dairy industry contributed $45.6 billion in economic activity in 2017 — up 6% from five years earlier. Dairy processing, which includes cheesemaking, accounted for roughly two-thirds of the amount.
Wisconsin is America’s Dairyland, but there’s more produced here than milk and cheese. The state ranks first in the nation for snap beans, cranberries and ginseng. It ranks third in the nation for potatoes.
Overall food processing, which includes dairy, vegetables, fruit, beef, pork, poultry and other products, contributed $82.7 billion to the agribusiness economy and represented the bulk of the growth over the five-year period.
Wisconsin lost more than 2,300 dairy farms during that time. But milk production climbed steadily to a record 30 billion pounds in 2016 as farms got bigger, the number of cows stayed roughly the same, and the amount of milk per cow increased.
“The cows did not go away. They were bought up by other farms,” said Steven Deller, a UW-Madison agricultural economist and author of the report.
The American dairy industry is undergoing seismic change, and farms — especially small, family operations — are shutting down at one of the fastest rates since the Great Depression. In the first half of 2019, a total of 449 dairy farms were lost in Wisconsin alone — nearly 25% more than during the same period last year.
The report “doesn’t soften the financial blow that many farms in Wisconsin are taking under continued depressed commodity prices,” said Heidi Johnson, interim director of the UW Extension Agriculture Institute.
The demise of farms is worrisome because they are the lifeblood of many rural communities and support food processors as well.
“The continued weak net farm income may put the food processing industry at risk. There is a clear balancing act between ensuring a healthy farm economy while continuing to promote growth in food processing,” Deller said.
