Salad greens for sale at a bodega in Astoria, New York. The number of cases of cyclosporiasis has more than doubled to over 4,173 cases across 41 states this week. (Photo by Shalina Chatlani/ Stateline)
The number of cases of cyclosporiasis — a parasitic infection linked to contaminated water or food that causes severe intestinal issues — has more than doubled to over 4,173 cases across 41 states this week, up from the 1,645 confirmed cases in 34 states reported last week by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Cyclosporiasis causes symptoms that include watery or “explosive” diarrhea, nausea and stomach cramps. The surge in cases had made 2026 the worst year for the infection on record.
The CDC estimates that there are likely more than 7,400 additional cases that have not yet been confirmed. No deaths have been reported, but 308 people have been hospitalized, more than double the 141 hospitalizations reported last week.
State and federal officials suspect there are multiple sources of the outbreak, but they had reported that the cases in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia were connected to shredded iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico and sold by Taylor Farms. On Monday, however, federal officials said tests making the connection were a false positive.
Michigan, the first state to report an outbreak, reported 7,171 cases and 102 hospitalizations as of July 16. Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Indiana also have seen high case counts, alongside New York City.
The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, which represents public health agencies across the country, said labs have a hard time tracking case connections because cyclospora is a parasitic genome that is more complex than the bacterial pathogens that cause other foodborne illnesses. As a result, state and local heath investigators must resort to reviewing restaurant and grocery receipts, menus and supply chain records, according to the organization.
“Case interviews and traceback investigations are often time intensive, creating a burden on state and local public health infrastructure,” senior analyst Heather Tomlinson and environmental health director Courtney Anderson wrote.
North Carolina had confirmed more than 560 cyclosporiasis cases as of July 20. Dr. Carl Williams, state public health veterinarian for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, told reporters on Tuesday that the state has relied heavily on its 86 local health departments to track cases.
Williams said twice weekly calls with the CDC also have been helpful.
“The CDC has been very responsive to us and the other states,” Williams said during the briefing. “But as you can imagine, I mean, it’s a lot to go through.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Attorneys say cases that claim the popular weedkiller causes cancer will have to change course to move forward in court after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the agriculture company last month.
New federal rules for dicamba aim to help cotton and soybean farmers control weeds. But the herbicide, which can kill other crops and trees, remains controversial.
A sign noting the acceptance of electronic benefit transfer cards for food aid is displayed at a grocery store in California. Upcoming shifts in the federal food stamp program are poised to cost states billions of dollars, raising fears that more Americans will lose access to the nation’s largest food assistance program.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Upcoming funding shifts in the federal food stamp program are poised to cost states billions of dollars, heightening fears that more Americans will lose access to the nation’s largest food assistance program.
Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act made major changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, including new eligibility and work requirements. Already, more than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits, putting more pressure on food banks and food pantries across the country.
But beginning in fall 2027, states for the first time must begin to fund some SNAP benefits themselves. Analyses of newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show states could be on the hook for more than $9 billion. Some states, county officials and advocates fear this will remove more Americans from the safety net program and even push some states to consider dropping out of SNAP altogether.
The new law will penalize states depending on their payment error rates — a technical calculation by the feds of SNAP overpayments and underpayments, not fraud. States with a payment error rate above 6% will have to fund 5% to 15% of their benefit payments. Previously, the feds provided the aid.
In USDA’s most recent analysis, the error rate slightly improved across the states in fiscal year 2025, but officials said states still made a collective $10.1 billion in improper payments.
“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a June news release.
As many as 36 states will face new cost share requirements in the fall of 2027. And nearly half of those are expected to be on the hook for $100 million or more a year, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
For example, in Michigan, the current error rate could cost the state $300 million a year, the center estimates. Texas could be on the hook for an estimated $725 million and New York may need to spend more than $1 billion.
“States are going to have to make some really painful decisions as they have to balance their budgets about how they are going to cover those costs, and if they can’t fully cover the required cost-sharing requirement, by raising revenue or cutting elsewhere in their budget,” said Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst at the center.
The change is heightening fears that states will slow down benefit approval, cut access or even choose to drop out of the program altogether, Bergh said. While advocates and some officials have unsuccessfully pushed Congress to reverse its SNAP changes, many are now asking for at least a delay in implementation to give states time to improve their payment error rates.
After USDA released its new data last month, New Jersey Human Services Commissioner Stephen Cha said the error rate measurement is “fundamentally flawed.” Though the state significantly cut its error rate from 14.33% to 6.86%, it could still be on the hook for an estimated $100 million.
Cha reiterated previous calls for Congress and the Trump administration to eliminate or delay the changes.
“Penalizing states will do nothing to improve payment accuracy or meaningfully address waste, fraud, or abuse,” Cha said in a statement. “Instead, they impose a significant financial and administrative burden on State and county governments, threatening our ability to effectively administer SNAP and meet the critical needs of families across New Jersey.”
In a statement to Stateline, a USDA spokesperson noted states have had decades to improve erroneous payments. “Perhaps now, States will stop spending other people’s money so recklessly,” the statement said.
Looming budget pressures
In 10 states — California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — counties administer the SNAP program.
The National Association of Counties has said the cost shift will threaten not only food access, but could squeeze the ability of counties to fund public safety, emergency management and infrastructure needs.
“These cost shifts threaten to destabilize county budgets, forcing reductions in staffing and delaying critical nutrition assistance for vulnerable residents,” association CEO Matthew Chase said in a letter last year to congressional leaders.
The National Conference of State Legislatures, which represents lawmakers and legislative staff, said states are committed to administering SNAP benefits accurately and to being held accountable for their performance. But in a statement, the organization said USDA’s most recent data “make clear that additional time is needed” to implement meaningful improvements.
State efforts to improve their payment accuracy also have substantial tradeoffs.
This spring, the Urban Institute and the American Public Human Services Association surveyed all SNAP agencies across the country. Thirty-nine states responded to the survey, representing a 78% response rate.
The survey found that SNAP administrators are investing in staffing, technology and automation to respond to the federal law. But many states are turning away from efforts to improve timeliness and may have to reduce staffing and benefits to comply.
In the survey, 29% of states identified narrowing eligibility policies as a potential risk and 11% saw a wholesale withdrawal from SNAP as a potential risk.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said churches, food banks and other organizations would ensure that people are fed there.
Stitt, the chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association, said he believes federal programs like SNAP are operated with “a lot of fraud and abuse.” He also suggested that the program had become too seamless, with cards that resemble credit cards allowing recipients to easily purchase groceries.
“Maybe it’s going back to the day where there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed,” he told Stateline. “Maybe we should go back to a little bit of that instead of just making it so easy…”
“Nobody’s going to go hungry in Oklahoma,” he said. “…I can assure you people were eating, getting married, graduating from high school before we even had anything called SNAP benefits.”
The error rate
The federal focus on error rates is incentivizing states to slow down or entirely halt benefits in some cases, said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to combat hunger.
That’s because states face no penalty for wrongfully denying benefits, she said, only for paying too much or too little in benefits. The rate, calculated by a random sample of households, adds the number of overpayments and underpayments together. And states can still be penalized for overpayments they later recover from recipients.
“There is no oversight in terms of the people who are eligible and being cut off,” Plata-Nino said.
In Massachusetts, nearly 175,000 people lost SNAP benefits between July of last year and May of this year. And understaffing at the Department of Transitional Assistance has caused thousands of incoming phone calls from residents to get disconnected, according to the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a poverty law and policy center.
That organization has pushed for more caseworkers, though a legislative budget proposal last week would cut $26 million from existing operations, said Victoria Negus, senior economic justice advocate at the institute.
“What is happening is a version of what I’ve been calling ‘can’t see the forest for the payment error rate trees,’” she said. “They have set up this system that forces states to try to meet a number that is almost impossible for them to meet without fully decimated access to SNAP, because it takes time to methodically and carefully reduce payment error rates.”
In Alabama, officials said the state continues to prioritize staff training, automation and other changes to reduce the state’s error rate. The current error rate of 9.52% could cost the state an estimated $170 million.
Alabama’s legislature has set aside nearly $150 million for the SNAP program. But state Sen. Greg Albritton, a Republican who leads the budget committee, told the Alabama Reflector in April that those funds won’t be released unless the state can reduce its error rate to 6% or develop another plan to cover costs of the federal cuts.
Kathryn Shoupe, spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Human Resources, noted that the federal data can be over a year old. She also noted that it isn’t evidence of fraud, but usually unintentional reporting errors from recipients.
LaTrell Clifford Wood, the hunger policy advocate at the anti-poverty nonprofit Alabama Arise, said the state needs hundreds more employees to fully meet the need. She noted that more than 52,000 people have already lost SNAP benefits in Alabama. And with rising grocery prices, she said the focus on the error rate will force difficult budgetary decisions that could affect other parts of the state budget, such as education.
“It is a metric with moral ambiguity,” she said. “We are putting paper pushing over people.”
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A bill allowing year-round sales of E15, a fuel blended with up to 15 percent corn-based ethanol, is being debated in the Senate. While the bill is hailed as a boon for corn growers, there are concerns that it could hurt soybean prices.
A solar project in Dane County opened last year with the idea of combining green energy and farming — known as an “agrivoltaics” site. The Kegonsa Research Campus is one of the largest in the country. WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” visited the site to see it up close.
According to the state DOJ, the coalition secured more than 50 million eggs and $3.3 million from the companies through the settlement. The eggs will be provided to food banks and nonprofit organizations across the country at the producers’ expense.
Biofuel and corn advocates argue expanding the use of higher-ethanol gasoline could increase demand for corn and serve as a lifeline for farmers. Critics say it would lead to environmental and health costs.
Silos — tower-like structures on farms that hold fermented feed for livestock — have dotted the Midwestern landscape for 150 years. But they’re threatened by development and old age. One “silo hunter” in northern Illinois has been tracking down silos her grandfather built before they disappear.
Marianne May drove around the backroads of McHenry County on a recent afternoon, scanning for those tall, round structures with a shallow point at the top that’s characteristic of her grandfather’s silos. Some of them have a little diamond shape on the very top — his signature.
She’s a self-proclaimed silo hunter, and she comes back to her hometown throughout the year to find ever more silos that her grandfather, Frank May, built on some of the oldest farms in the Midwest.
“I grew up in Richmond, and I always knew where a lot of my grandpa’s silos were,” she said. “I just sort of had them in my head. I never really thought that I would do anything about it. They just were always there, part of the landscape.”
Marianne May poses at one of Frank May’s silos in Johnsburg, Ill., on April 25, 2026. This one is particularly special to Marianne; her grandfather constructed it as an adult on the homestead he grew up on. Across the street, a matching silo stands next to Marianne May’s grandmother’s childhood home. Her grandparents were neighbors as kids. (Jess Savage / Northern Public Radio)
Silos probably fade into the background for most people who live in the Corn Belt. Though they often serve as landmarks, people’s connection to them has tended to be utilitarian. Occasionally, silos have been saved by being converted into housing or public space, but many others have been destroyed.
But their legacy is rooted in Illinois. Historians believe the first one in the Midwest was built in Spring Grove, a village in McHenry County. Bill Kemp, historian with the McLean County Museum of History, said silos transformed agriculture in the Midwest.
“Silos and all of these magnificent, very utilitarian buildings,” Kemp said, “really speak to this rich, dynamic, very diverse agriculture that was practiced up until World War II — or the decade after World War II — when industrialization and commercialization and singular, two-crop farming came into play.”
Farmers used to have to rely on dried hay to feed their animals over the winter, but it was bulky and it didn’t last long. But silos are airtight containers that farmers could pack tightly with corn, allow it to ferment and then store it for years. They used to be made of wood, but when people like Frank May started using concrete in the early 1900s, farmers could grow their livestock herds even larger.
Kemp said initially, farmers were skeptical of this new invention.
“Once you would have a farmer in a particular township or in a rural neighborhood construct a silo and find how useful it was,” he said, “that would be quickly adapted by his or her neighbors.”
It’s an essential structure.
“We tend to forget about the built environment of the Corn Belt,” he said. “And all these wonderful stories — the buildings and the structures in the countryside that people drive past all the time but never really think about — what do they say about the past?”
A Frank May silo next to Deno Buralli Jr.’s barn on April 25, 2026. When Buralli bought the farm, he said there was silage – fermented feed for livestock – in the silo, which was enough to feed his cattle through that first winter. (Jess Savage / Northern Public Radio)
Marianne May said silo hunting can be a thankless task. She’s been doing this for six years and has identified almost 200 of her grandfather’s silos. She said there may be at least that many more.
“Almost every place I go, there’s something,” she said. “There’s some connection, whether it’s somebody in my family or extended family, or maybe they worked with Frank. There’s something fun to be discovered.”
So much of the work is investigation and guesswork. But she can speculate what it was like for her grandparents to grow up as neighbors, just like she wonders why the silos are clustered in groups, or why he used one shape over another.
She found a silo at Frank May’s childhood home, as well as a matching silo at the farmhouse across the street. That’s where Marianne’s grandmother grew up.
“I think it’s important that these silos are identified,” she said. “The locations where they are and where they were, because each time I come home, there are some gone that get pushed over for development or just fall over.”
It’s a reminder that May’s project is never-ending and that it’s a gift to learn more about the family history of the area’s farming community — and the mark farming made on the Midwestern landscape.
A Frank May silo tucked away behind trees in southern Wisconsin on April 25, 2026. When Tom Schurman bought the farm a few years ago, he said the silo was practically invisible through the overgrown trees. It took a lot of work to clear the area, and now his kids play basketball on the foundation of what used to be a barn. (Jess Savage / Northern Public Radio)
Scott Rosenberg and Heather Toman did not expect to own a vegetable farm in Wisconsin. Toman was born in New Mexico, and Rosenberg spent the first two decades of his career in the insurance industry.
Now, as the owners of Full Circle Community Farm in Seymour, they’re considered some of the best organic farmers in the Midwest, and they’re helping expand a community dedicated to sustainable farming.
Rosenberg quit his high-paying job to get an associate’s degree in sustainable farming at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. There he met Valerie Dantoin, who encouraged him to rent a quarter acre of her land to grow vegetables.
“A midlife crisis is really what it kind of came down to, but instead of buying a sports car, I took a gigantic pay decrease,” Rosenberg joked.
After getting her master’s degree in biology at Northern Michigan University, Toman met Rosenberg and established Full Circle Community Farm in 2017, along with Andrew Adamski.
“It’s a continuous learning curve,” Toman said. “It never is really going to end – us learning and improving. We figure out new things every year.
Scott Rosenberg, center, gives a tour of Full Circle Community Farm on June 7, 2026, in Seymour, Wis., as part of a series inviting residents to explore farms in northeast Wisconsin. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Collaboration in action
The vegetable farm started on the family land of Rick Adamski and Dantoin, who own an organic pork and beef farm that Full Circle Community Farm partners with. Marbleseed named the group of five its Organic Farmers of the Year for 2024 for their sustainable practices.
Rosenberg and Toman now farm between 12 and 15 acres at peak season. Their Community Supported Agriculture program serves 250 people during the summer, delivering boxes of fresh produce to customers in Green Bay, De Pere and Appleton.
Full Circle Community Farm employs interns from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College as well as community members who work shifts on the farm in exchange for fresh produce. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
“Another way to look at it is in 2017-2018, for our cold storage, we were utilizing a donated refrigerator, and now we have a 20-foot by 30-foot walk-in cooler,” Rosenberg said. “So things have slowly changed over the years.”
They help run the SLO Farmers Co-op, a group of seven independent family farms in northeast Wisconsin that cooperate to provide food to local schools and restaurants. All of the farms are committed to organic and sustainable practices.
“Corn, soy farmers, you know, at the end of the day, they’re farmers like I am, so I have respect for them and what they do, and they can farm how they want,” Rosenberg said. “It’s important to me that I’m recognizing the migratory birds that are coming through the area, and the deer that sometimes eat my vegetables, just having buffer zones by the creek of trees, and planting additional trees in there that are native to the area.”
Rosenberg gave a public tour of the farm on Sunday, June 7, as part of the Summer Farm Crawl hosted by the Lake to Bay chapter of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. Rosenberg showed their greenhouses and some of his equipment, like an Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor that he modified to be an electric vehicle using a golf cart motor.
“Even though I’m not an engine guy, I figured if I just started taking bolts off the engine, it would eventually fall off, and it did … I can get about six hours of operation off that battery, which is more than I need in a single day,” Rosenberg said.
Scott Rosenberg shows the Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor that he modified to use an electric motor. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Building community
Full Circle Community Farm also provides a “worker share” option for its CSA, in which members work a shift each week in exchange for a large box of produce. These workers have grown into some of their most valued employees.
“People just find us, and they have been a huge, huge blessing,” Rosenberg said. “We’ve had some worker shares that have been with us for four or five years now, and they just love their little four-hour slice of coming out here once a week and getting their hands dirty and doing something different.”
The farm also takes on interns through NWTC, training people of many experience levels.
“We’ll bring people on with zero skills and patiently work with them,” Rosenberg said. “I just get a kick out of working with people and teaching them things, and just seeing the wonder on their faces that sometimes I don’t always feel, so I feel like that’s pretty unique.”
Amber Borealis started as a worker share about eight years ago. She moved onto the property during the COVID-19 pandemic and is now working full time as the farm’s pack shed manager. She’s impressed by how much they’ve been able to expand the farm over the years, including building the pack shed and three high tunnel greenhouses.
“When I started, they had one field,” Borealis said. “So just getting to see how much they can grow and how much community support they’ve had and how much they’ve supported the community in return has been really awesome.”
Rosenberg and Toman start by individually seeding each plant in the greenhouse before transferring them into the ground at Full Circle Farm in Seymour, Wis. (Astrid Code / Wisconsin Watch)
Transitioning to farm life wasn’t always easy – Borealis was born in Virginia and trained as a glassblower in college — but Rosenberg and Toman were always game for her to try new things.
“This past year I learned how to drive a tractor, which is not something I ever thought I’d do in my life … It’s terrifying the first time,” Borealis said. “It is a very large piece of equipment. It’s very loud. You feel very exposed, even if you’re in a cab, because it’s all glass. But it’s really fun, and this is the first year that the plants we’re harvesting are things I planted driving the tractor.”
Borealis said she’s found an important sense of community living on the farm, especially since her family lives far away on the East and West coasts.
“It’s nice having the little shelter and little group of friends who feel like family here,” Borealis said. “If I’m having a bad day, I can absolutely lean on Scott or Heather. And then if I’m having a really good day, they will absolutely support me and be like, ‘Yes, you did it!’”
This story is part of Meet a Neighbor, an ongoing feature series focused on the people who make a difference in northeastern Wisconsin. Know someone we should spotlight? Nominate them here.
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All of Greg Thoren’s cows are technically identified by the number on their ear tag. But when he drives around his pastures checking in on his animals, they go by another name: Sweetie.
“Hey, sweetie,” he reassured one cow — her ear labeled 604. “Hi, honey. You’re okay.”
In the spring, one of Thoren’s daily tasks is tooling around looking for calves that were born overnight. This cow had a newborn.
“You’re okay. You had that baby this morning.”
He stepped out of the truck, caught hold of the calf and in a few moments had looked it over, tagged its ear and popped back into the truck. He made a couple of notes in a battered pocket notebook and continued on through the fields.
Thoren comes out to greet his cows most days, bringing a pile of hay in the bed of his old pickup truck as a snack. If he stops for long enough, the herd descends on his truck, eating straight from the bed.
He’s a regenerative farmer, which means that as much as he cares for his animals, he cares about his soil more. He used to work the land as intensely as any other conventional farmer, but he quit “cold turkey” years ago.
Now, he’s cover-cropping, rotational-grazing, no-tilling and trying out any other conservation method he wants to experiment with. And it’s showing interesting results: He’s saving a lot of money, his cows are healthier, and his profits are growing. Plus, researchers have shown that these and similar conservation methods reduce soil erosion and water pollution and help to store more carbon in the soil compared to conventional methods.
Greg Thoren sits in the bed of a pickup truck as he speaks to a crowd of a few dozen farmers and non-farmers at a field day he hosted on April 3, 2026. Thoren was hosting field days before the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition in Illinois officially began, but now other farmers connected to the coalition are hosting field days of their own. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
He also shares what he’s learned with a group called the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition. The work they do is at the heart of the “farmer-led movement,” a grassroots initiative to put farmers at the center of agricultural innovation, rather than top-down academics or government officials. The movement is well underway in northwest Illinois, and similar examples can be found throughout the U.S. and across the globe.
The coalition believes that one of the most effective ways to make farms more resilient — and more profitable — is to invite people into farmer-led conversations about soil health and water quality. Many farmers in the coalition are trying their own conservation methods and sharing the outcomes at field days and regular meetups.
This shared knowledge is meant to create a community of farmers who are shifting their mindset. They show up to learn from one another and experiment with conservation themselves. The coalition estimates their outreach, education and events have reached hundreds of people.
‘Figuring out practices that will work’
Corn Belt farmers are in the midst of multiple crises. Conventional farming practices are contributing to pollution, erosion and financial misfortune. Farm debt and bankruptcies are rising, and so are prices for inputs like fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. Meanwhile, the prices farmers get for crops like corn, soybeans and wheat are on a downturn. The Midwest lost more than 30,000 farms between 2017 and 2024.
The farmer-led movement offers an answer to these crises.
“Change is what needs to happen,” said Beth Baranski, the organizing secretary for the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition. “The farmer-led movement allows people to share the risk and minimize the risk. … The key is the farmers on their farms, in their fields, figuring out the practices that will work for them to achieve these goals.”
One of Greg Thoren’s cows munches on some hay April 13, 2026, in Stockton, Illinois. He likes to bring a pickup truck bed full of hay out with him when he goes to check on his animals, and if he stops long enough, they’ll swarm his truck. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
Many farmers in the movement are still using conventional practices. It’s not necessarily the goal of the coalition to convince everyone to take on 100% regenerative practices. The group recognizes every farmer comes to it from a different place and has different priorities for their land and operations. Even if they wanted to try regenerative farming practices, razor-thin margins make it financially risky to make the switch.
Instead, the goal is for farmers to show their neighbors what’s possible and learn from each other.
And while there are plenty of government programs and grants and incentives that could help in theory, Baranski said many farmers are skeptical about how well they actually work. She said that, generally, they’re more likely to trust another farmer.
“Somebody coming from the corporate world or from an institution … and saying, ‘This is what you need to do,’ is not as effective as a neighboring farmer who has tried one practice and found it beneficial,” she said.
‘Farmers tend to push it’
The coalition offers connection and tested solutions to some of agriculture’s biggest problems. But it’s a slow-growing movement, and much of the industry is set up to work in opposition to the coalition’s goals, said Jonathan Coppess, an associate professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
“When things are tight and margins are tough, what we’ve seen historically is farmers tend to push it, right? You push the land, you try to put more land in production,” he said.
Coppess said policy coming from the government should support innovation like regenerative agriculture so farmers don’t have to choose between protecting soil and water and making a profit. But he said policies act like a barrier instead.
“If you’re running tight — or even sometimes negative — margins on a crop, you’re going to try to get more of that crop so you can have a little bit more room to market it. And you’re going to try to do everything you can to put bushels in the bin.”
He said that pressure makes it that much harder for farmers to move away from conventional practices and try conservation.
“In theory, farmers could just decide to put less nitrogen on (their fields),” he said. “The risk of doing that is pretty significant. And so our policies may be making it worse … but we’re also not addressing those issues. And so to me, it’s almost like paradoxes within paradoxes wrapped in ironies.”
He said conservation-minded farmers can be put at a competitive disadvantage to other farmers and across the supply chain.
“Farmers doing conservation practices are some of our most innovative,” he said. “They’re thinking well ahead. … Maybe it takes three or four or five years for this practice to really begin to pay off, and that’s a really critical but difficult investment.”
A thick clump of aggregated soil from one of Greg Thoren’s fields in Stockton, Illinois, which he showed curious farmers who attended his field day April 3, 2026. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
The farmer-led movement does have some federal backing. The coalition got seed money from an organization called the Fishers & Farmers Partnership, which uses Congress-appropriated money to support similar projects in the Midwest. They also support projects that actually install conservation practices. So far, they’ve funded 70 projects, and with matching funds from other sources to support these projects, they’ve generated more than $9 million for initiatives that put farmers at the center of the conversation.
Amy Smith is one of the directors of the partnership. She said it is important to fund work that starts with the farmer.
“We’re focusing on the farmer because we’re focusing on people,” she said. “We are sitting with that farmer at the table, and we’re pulling in other people that they can connect with, and then they’re doing the same on the back end. They’re connecting with neighbors; they’re connecting with local county members.”
The partnership has awarded grants for more than 15 years, and so far, they’ve helped to enhance 113 habitats and conserve almost 40,000 acres of land. Since 2021, their work has engaged more than 175,000 people in outreach or education events like the ones Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition hosts.
“Creating this mind shift in one farmer can lead to the mind shift of 20,” Smith said. “And that’s where we see watershed-scale change, landscape-scale change.”
Inviting people in
As Thoren turned his truck onto the dirt road toward home, he said even though farming this way isn’t exactly easy, but when it’s stripped down to the basics, it’s pretty simple.
“You’ve got to think about the farm. It’s not about the people. It’s about the farm. It’s about the land. It’s about the soil. That’s why I tell these young people, ‘Come in with me.’ I said, ‘It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about the soil.’”
Greg Thoren kneels down April 13, 2026, to check cover crops he recently planted — a mix of barley, oats, clover and sugar beets. Last year, he grew corn in the same field in Stockton, Illinois. The plants are just barely poking up in the soil in the spring, but he’ll set his cows out to graze by mid-summer. (Jess Savage / WNIJ)
That kind of understanding doesn’t come easy under the current industry that incentivizes conventional farming, he said. But when farmers’ minds start to shift, so can the whole system.
“It just all comes together,” Thoren said. “It’s not the system. It’s the mindset of the person to get the system activated, but you got to have the mindset of the person first. That’s my true belief.”
He’s hosting a field day later this summer, and other farmers connected to the group are hosting their own field days, as well. It’s a testament to the success of the coalition; they get to be in a supporting role to farmers who are leading the way forward.
April 22, 1970, was no ordinary day in the bustling city of St. Louis. On this first Earth Day, streets filled with rallies, and lecture halls were packed with attendees. Most famously, rows of students marched through the streets wearing gas masks, protesting air pollution.
Around that time, John E. Franz was brewing up something dark in the depths of Monsanto’s St. Louis lab: glyphosate, an herbicide since linked to widespread environmental harm, cancer concerns and more than 100,000 lawsuits.
While other countries have regulated or limited glyphosate production, the U.S. has largely ignored the problem. In February, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14387 to promote the production of glyphosate and security for its producers.
The U.S. is increasingly dependent on glyphosate, and its overuse is becoming a serious concern. Amid the many environmental issues competing for attention, glyphosate deserves a prominent place this Earth Day, especially in Wisconsin.
Why Wisconsin? Glyphosate levels in groundwater aren’t being consistently monitored in the state’s highest-risk areas — its CAFO counties.
From fields to faucets
Wisconsin farmers apply millions of pounds of glyphosate each year, primarily to fields growing soybeans and corn — the state’s two biggest crops. Those crops are used to feed animals at Wisconsin’s 293 concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.
After animals eat glyphosate-treated crops, the chemical can reemerge in their manure. This is a problem, considering that mismanagement of CAFO waste frequently leads to groundwater contamination.
Seems like something that should be setting off red flags, right?
Monitoring falls short in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) oversees groundwater and surface water testing for agrichemicals. The agency monitors pesticides and agricultural runoff through a private well sampling program, a field-edge monitoring program and random well sampling conducted every five to 10 years.
However effective these programs may appear, a closer look at where Wisconsin’s CAFOs are located compared with where monitoring occurs reveals a stark mismatch.
The three counties with the most CAFOs — Manitowoc (25), Brown (22), Kewaunee (19) — are all located in the Northeast Lakeshore region, where none of DATCP’s 22 field-edge monitoring wells are located, according to a 2023 report, the most recent available. The state’s monitoring system misses areas at highest risk for aquifer contamination.
Unfortunately it gets worse. DATCP’s Targeted Sampling Program also does not cover the entire Northeast Lakeshore Watershed, and these sampling panels do not test for glyphosate or its byproducts, the agency’s most recent program report shows.
The solution? Advocacy
Glyphosate usage has increased 15-fold since the 1990s. It will continue to go unchecked if more research and monitoring aren’t conducted to track where this chemical ends up.
If you’re a private landowner with a well, write to DATCP and volunteer to have your well sampled.
Universities such as University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay also play a role. DATCP already partners with both on research. Contact leaders of their water-related programs.
Why glyphosate still matters
To be sure, glyphosate is not the only problematic agrichemical. But it is by far the most widely used herbicide in U.S. agriculture, and its scale alone warrants closer monitoring of its spread in aquifers.
Still not convinced? Consider the many other contaminants that can leach into groundwater from CAFO manure — including other agrichemicals, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals and bacteria. Glyphosate is just one of many reasons stronger groundwater monitoring is needed in this region.
We’re not asking for much.
Glyphosate well testing is relatively inexpensive and should not strain government resources. Progress will depend on public pressure: Concerned citizens must keep pushing until stronger monitoring is in place across all at-risk areas of this beautiful state we call home.
Allison Gilmeister is a graduate student at Yale University studying religion and ecology. She grew up in Appleton.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Strong winds whipped around Doug Bartek, a fifth-generation farmer, as he headed into a grain bin to shovel soybeans onto a conveyor chute. The 60-year-old was anxious at the onset of the spring planting season, rattling off the long list of issues affecting his family’s livelihood at their 2,000-acre farm near Wahoo, Nebraska.
The high cost of fuel, equipment and fertilizer — compounded by the Iran war — and also tariffs, perceived “price gouging” by suppliers, and low soybean prices driven by a global supply glut. All of it weighs on Bartek, who is chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Association.
“Our biggest struggles are our inputs, be it fertilizer, seed, chemical, parts,” Bartek said. “There has been so much drastic markup in all of these. And I just kind of feel like the farmer’s kind of painted in the corner.”
Bartek’s concerns are shared by many Midwest soybean producers. Costs, such as equipment, have crept up over time while soybean prices have stayed low. Tariffs levied by the Trump administration last year and the resulting monthslong trade war with China only made things worse, they say. Then the Iran war bottled up shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, restricting global fertilizer supplies and sending fertilizer prices sky high. A ceasefire deal announced April 7 raised hope that bottlenecks in the strait would abate, but the future of the agreement was uncertain.
“A lot of producers are pretty nervous going into this year,” said Justin Sherlock, a soybean farmer and president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. “It looks like we’re going to have another year of negative returns.”
Years of rising costs, low soybean prices
Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed, food and biofuels, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. That hasn’t always been the case. Before the 1960s soybeans weren’t a major crop in the U.S, according to Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. It wasn’t until the 1990s that soybean production accelerated due to international demand — primarily from China — and soybeans and corn are now dominant in U.S. agriculture.
But U.S. soybean farmers, who typically also grow corn, have been facing financial issues for years even before the onset of the Iran war. Soybean prices have been persistently low in recent years. The global market has been awash in soybeans, driven in part by Brazil, which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest soybean producer years ago.
“If we look at global soybean production over the past several years, it continues to set record after record, after record,” Hart said. “There’s been just large supplies globally, and that has led to depressed prices.”
Meanwhile, Midwest soybean farmers’ costs have risen. Overall farm production expenses, including seed and pesticide, have increased over time, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Operating costs for soybean production have stayed elevated since 2020 and are projected to increase again in 2026, according to the agency.
The cost of land also is a major issue for farmers, experts say. Midwest crop land values have increased. And most regional farmers rent some of their land, according to Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.
Soybeans from last year’s harvest are loaded into a truck at Doug Bartek’s farm near Wahoo, Neb., on April 6, 2026. (Charlie Riedel / Associated Press)
Bartek, who rents three-quarters of his land, said landowners are increasing rents, causing further financial strain.
“There’s a lot of what I call absentee landowners that have absolutely no idea what goes on on the farm,” he said. “All they know is their taxes went up and you get to make up the difference, some way, somehow.”
“They’re very concerned about negative margins driven by low prices and high cost,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of farmers. “There’s just a liquidity cash crunch for a lot of them and they’re just trying to figure out how to deal with everything.”
The number of farms in the U.S. has shrunk over time, and consolidation in farming is a long-term trend, though farmers’ financial pressures wrought by high input costs and low commodity prices have contributed, Hart said. Larger farms tend to be more competitive and depend on large, expensive machinery.
“The financial reserves need(ed) on a farm are much greater than they used to be,” Hart said. “We’re a bit more sensitive to the financial conditions these days because so much capital is being utilized within the farm business.”
Tariffs, trade war have lasting impacts
Market forces aren’t the only issue weighing on farmers. Sweeping tariffs levied by President Donald Trump in April 2025 exacerbated a trade war with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. China responded with retaliatory tariffs and effectively boycotted U.S. soybeans, cutting off a major export market for Midwest farmers and driving the price of soybeans even lower.
“When that was announced and soybean prices basically collapsed, if you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK,” said Mike Cerny, a soybean and winter wheat corn farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin. “If you had a mortgage due or payments due or cash flow needs and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough.”
The U.S. and China eventually reached a deal in late 2025. Beijing committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. China has since met its initial soybean purchase goal, and the Trump administration also rolled out a $12 billion temporary aid package in December to boost farmers affected by the trade war.
But the damage is already done, experts and farmers say. While China’s renewed purchases and the federal payments are helping, it’s not enough to recover farmers’ losses. Even after federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per harvested acre of soybeans in the 2025 crop, according to the American Soybean Association. And the trade war further pushed China toward competing soybean exporters, such as Brazil — accelerating a trend of declining U.S. soybean exports to China.
“When China decided to stop purchasing, we couldn’t find enough other markets to replace those sales,” Hart said. “We’re still feeling the impacts today. When you look at where soybean exports are today versus where we would normally expect them to be, we’re still running anywhere from 15% to 20% behind normal.”
Joseph Glauber, former chief economist at the Department of Agriculture between 2008 and 2014, said global competitors to U.S. soybean farmers gained from the trade war.
“When China has put on tariffs against the U.S. they’ve tended to buy them from Brazil or Argentina, largely Brazil,” Glauber added. “We’re not nearly as dominant in the world as we used to be in terms of the global export market for soybeans.”
Iran war drove up fuel, fertilizer costs
After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, a severe slowdown in shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz sent the price of oil soaring. The shipping disruption also largely stopped the export of nitrogen fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf and limited access to key fertilizer ingredients. The price of urea, the most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, skyrocketed.
Soybeans don’t require nitrogen fertilizer, but it’s vital for corn, and most soybean farmers also grow corn. About half the global supply of urea comes from the Middle East, and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are two of the top sources of U.S. fertilizer imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The U.S. and Iran last week agreed to a two-week ceasefire that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but traffic remained slowed amid disagreements over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, and the price of urea remains elevated.
Many Midwest farmers bought their fertilizer well in advance of the spring planting season. But some farmers who didn’t buy early face elevated prices. Dave Walton, a corn, soybean and hay farmer in Iowa and vice president of the American Soybean Association, said in March that some of his neighbors didn’t have cash on hand last fall to buy fertilizer and were struggling to budget for fertilizer due to high prices.
The war also caused gasoline and diesel prices to surge, causing further headaches for farmers. Oil prices dropped following the ceasefire announcement, but the war and the closure of the strait will have lasting impacts on farmers, said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. Facilities in the Middle East that are critical for exporting chemicals, oil and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the war, and it will take time for supply chains to recover, he said.
“Facilities have been hit, like liquid natural gas plants,” Goldstein added. “You are also looking at a big supply crunch in commodity chemicals, which are the inputs for crop chemicals.”
“We burn a lot of diesel fuel,” said Chris Gould, a corn and soybean farmer in Maple Park, Illinois. “It’s hard to say if I’m gonna come out ahead or behind on this whole deal. But I suspect I’m gonna come out behind.”
Concerns about the future
Farmers’ financial problems are showing up in some measures. Farm bankruptcies, while still relatively low, continued to climb in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a survey of 400 farmers conducted by researchers at the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture in late March, almost half said their farm operation is financially worse off than it was a year ago.
Goldstein, the Morningstar analyst, said farmers’ high costs and low revenues contributed to the spike in bankruptcies between 2024 and 2025. If costs rise faster than crop prices going forward, he added, that “would strain farmers again and likely lead to more bankruptcies.”
After 43 years of farming, Bartek said the smell of fresh dirt still gets him excited for spring planting. But he’s also heard of farmer suicides, bankruptcies and “retirement sales” where farmers are forced to auction off their operations due to financial problems. Bartek compares farmers to gamblers who put “millions of dollars in the dirt” hoping for returns.
At times, Bartek doubts his own decision to go into farming. He’s also worried about his son, who purchased a farm a few years ago.
Bartek wonders: “Did I do the right thing helping him get into farming?”
This story is a collaboration between Lee Enterprises and The Associated Press.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.
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