Cadott dairy farmer to be Baldwin’s guest at State of the Union
A dairy farmer from Cadott will be at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday as the guest of Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin.
Les Danielson, who has a small dairy farm and a grain business, says he hopes to talk with lawmakers about the hard times that American farmers have experienced as the result of Trump’s trade wars.
“For grain farmers, it’s as bad as the dairy situation,” Danielson said.
Farmers stand to benefit from trade deals that Trump struck with Canada, Mexico and China. But for several years they were shut out of some markets, and lost ground in others, as the U.S. remained mired in trade disputes with its largest trading partners.
It will take time before commodities such as soybeans, corn, wheat and dairy benefit from China’s pledge to buy more U.S. agricultural products. And while the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement is helpful, Danielson said, for farmers it’s not much different than the North American Free Trade Agreement it replaced.
“I am glad it passed, but it’s not going to affect our prices much at all,” he said.
Wisconsin has been losing dairy farms at the rate of about two a day, most of them small, family-run operations. Many of those farms have been hemorrhaging money — or barely breaking even — for five years. The loss of those farms, and the impact on businesses and communities that rely on a farm economy, isn’t likely to be reversed.
“It’s really disappointing to witness what’s happened to rural America. Our small towns are just getting killed,” Danielson said.
In 2018, Baldwin visited Danielson’s farm to discuss the reforms she authored in the bipartisan Farm Bill, including grants for dairy business innovation, provisions to combat fraudulent organic imports and mental health resources for farmers.
“Wisconsin farmers are a key driver of our agricultural economy and the backbone of our rural communities, but right now our farmers are facing a perfect storm of challenges that have threatened their businesses and our communities,” Baldwin said in a statement.
Danielson said he’s seen dairy farms in his area go out of business, including one only three miles from his farm. He blames the trade wars for some of the demise.
“It seems like the first thing we did was to poke Canada and then kick Mexico. And with China refusing to buy U.S. soybeans for such a long time, and then doing everything they could to buy from South America, it’s had a huge effect on our markets,” he said.