Brian Reisinger said that the cows gave more milk than ever before on the day they left.
“I think they might have known where they were going,” Reisinger said.
The Reisingers stopped milking cows and started raising heifers and planting cash crops instead of selling the whole farm. This is part of a bigger trend in Dairyland.
“In general, the farms that have been closing down have been smaller. Chuck Nicholson, an associate professor at UW Madison’s Dairy Innovation Hub, said that the farms that are growing are usually the ones that are bigger.
Nicholson says that over the past 20 years, nearly 10,000 dairy farms have closed in Wisconsin. The National Agricultural Statistics Service said in a report that came out last month that more than 400 dairy farms in Wisconsin closed down last year. That is the most money that dairy farms have lost in three years.
Nicholson said, “It’s not really a matter of small vs. big.” More and more small farms are moving away from dairy, merging with bigger farms, or closing down.
Nicholson said that fixed costs like buildings and equipment can be spread out over a larger number of cows on larger farms. So that their costs go down and their profits go up.
Aside from the economy, changing demographics have also had an effect on how Wisconsin looks. In Wisconsin, the average age of a farmer is 55, and not all of their children want to take over. Janet Clark says that her small family farm is still going because the next generation is willing to take over.
Clark, the second-generation owner of Vision Aires Farms in Fond du Lac, said, “A lot of farms don’t have the next generation like my parents did.”
Reisinger said that the loss of small farms affects Wisconsin’s culture, no matter how the state got to where it is now.
Reisinger said, “It’s a big part of who we are as Wisconsinites.” “So when you lose that, you do lose a part of who you are.”
Nicholson said that these changes in the industry probably won’t change what’s on grocery store shelves. As bigger farms grow, milk production has gone up.
