An ongoing strike in a southern Wisconsin city dubbed by some the “Cheese Capital of the USA” has made one dairy production facility the locus for a complex labor dispute amid a sweeping federal crackdown on immigrants.

The post Monroe dairy workers strike raises thorny questions about labor, immigration law appeared first on WPR.

"It’s definitely a garden that is doing the magic that we wanted it to do," Heather Smith, owner of Tranquil Acres, told WPR.

The post At this Wisconsin farm, cost isn’t a barrier to healthy food appeared first on WPR.

A team of agricultural economists, environmental scientists and policy experts envisions a path toward a carbon-neutral agricultural future by expanding the reach of policies designed to promote low-carbon biofuels for transportation and aviation.

A group of residents want a judge to require a Portage County farm to conduct more protective groundwater monitoring, saying a settlement reached between the farm and state regulators weakened oversight.

The post Residents want Portage County farm to conduct better groundwater monitoring appeared first on WPR.

the Von Ruden farm sits on a hill overlooking Vernon County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

State Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Rep. Jenna Jacobson joined Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden on his Vernon County farm Thursday to criticize the economic and agricultural policies of President Donald Trump as bad for Wisconsin’s small and medium farms. 

The event at the farm in Westby came as Wisconsin Republicans have ignored or disputed the cumulative effect on farmers of tariffs on foreign imports, cuts to programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and an immigration policy that has scared away some farm laborers who are afraid to show up to work. 

“The tariffs coming out of Washington D.C. are hurting our farmers across Wisconsin and across the country, and you don’t have to just take this from me,” Pfaff said. “All you have to do is look at the economic indicators, those troubling signs that are coming across from Washington, D.C. Job growth is stagnating, prices are rising, and the agriculture sector is taking a hit. Sadly, my Republican colleagues in Madison seem to be turning a blind eye to all of these concerns.”

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), whom Jacobson is challenging in next year’s midterm elections, recently said that “farmers aren’t concerned” about the potential damage of Trump’s policies. At a telephone town hall earlier this week, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany said that through actions such as raising the estate tax exemption for farms and the establishment of trade agreements with countries around the world, Wisconsin farmers will be able to benefit from “free markets.” 

But Von Ruden told the Wisconsin Examiner he doesn’t see how Wisconsin’s farmers can benefit when the federal government is cutting programs that directly help them find markets for their products while tariffs only make it harder to export. Trump and Republicans have made massive cuts to USDA programs that help schools and food banks buy food from local farmers. The recently enacted Republican reconciliation law makes large cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which low-income residents have been able to use to buy food from producers at local farmer’s markets. 

“That’s hundreds of millions of dollars that farmers are going to lose because the government’s not going to be purchasing [food] to take care of the most needy people in this country,” Von Ruden said. “The other thing is, because we’ve allowed so many loopholes in the USDA, fewer people are getting bigger dollars from the government or insurance subsidies and things like that. So that’s taking money away from the small producers, because we don’t have the capabilities to hire an attorney to make sure that we get that $5 or $6 million check from Uncle Sam. Our members and myself, I would much rather get my income from the marketplace versus depending on a government check.”

Von Ruden’s kids are the fourth generation to work on his family farm. He said that with Trump’s tariffs, his costs are going up. Canadian fertilizer is more expensive. The John Deere tractor he uses will soon be unaffordable. 

“We need to make sure that we’re growing agriculture, not decreasing it. Looking at how tariffs are going to affect this farm, we’re going to see the trickle down effect from that in the commodity markets,” Von Ruden said. That trickle down effect is the biggest concern for farmers, he added. 

“The president has said that he’s going to make sure that farmers are taken care of,” Von Ruden said. “Tariffs aren’t going to do that. So let’s stop all the rhetoric.”

Jacobson pointed to a number of proposals in the Wisconsin Legislature meant to help farmers respond to Trump’s trade wars that Republicans have blocked. 

“Wisconsin Republicans had three chances to support our farmers, and three times they voted no,” she said. “Howard Marklein and Republicans in both chambers have failed to support our family farmers, failed to invest in our agricultural industry and made it harder for those in need to buy food. This is completely unacceptable.” 

The driftless region of western Wisconsin is set to become a major target for Democrats in next year’s midterm elections as the effects of Trump administration and Republican policies hit the purple swing region. In addition to Jacobson’s challenge of Marklein, Democrats are targeting U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden’s 3rd Congressional District seat.

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The toxic plant that killed Socrates thousands of years ago is becoming more prevalent in the Midwest. 

Poison hemlock is an invasive biennial plant that has tall, smooth stems with fern-like leaves and clustered small white flowers. It can grow up to eight feet tall. 

Meaghan Anderson, an Iowa State University Extension and Outreach field agronomist, said the plant is becoming more widespread due to several factors.

Those factors include unintentional movement of seeds from one place to another by floods, mowing equipment and animals. Hikers inadvertently transport seeds on their shoes or clothing.

Changing ecology could also be contributing to spread. For example, Anderson said tree loss in parts of eastern Iowa from the 2020 derecho made room for the plant. Cedar Rapids estimates it lost about 65% of the overall tree canopy that existed before the derecho flattened trees with hurricane-force winds.

“The loss of so many trees and opening of canopies has likely allowed for many weedy species to gain a foothold in areas they were not in the past,” Anderson said.

Since the plant was first introduced to the U.S. in the 1800s, hemlock has made its way into every state, except Hawaii. 

Scott Marsh, an agricultural weeds and seed specialist with the Kansas Department of Agriculture, said though the plant is widespread across the country, it’s generally more common in central parts of the United States. He said it is slightly less abundant in the southeast and northeast parts of the country.

Mark Leoschke, a botanist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ Wildlife Bureau, said poison hemlock likes moist soils and benefits from “disturbed areas,” like roadside ditches, flood plains, and creeks or rivers, where running water can carry seeds downstream.

“It just benefits from periodic disturbance, and it is the way it can grow and maintain itself,” Leoschke said.

Anderson said the plant also favors areas along fences and margins between fields and woodlands.

Generally, the plant isn’t a threat to lawns and residential yards, Leoschke said, because lawns are typically mowed regularly, which keeps the plant from maturing.

A ‘highly toxic’ plant

Poison hemlock — which is known by its scientific name conium maculatum and is native to Europe and Western Asia — starts growing in the springtime and is a dangerous plant. 

“The most serious risk with poison hemlock is ingesting it,” Anderson said. “The plant is highly toxic and could be fatal to humans and livestock if consumed.”

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service, every part of the plant — from its stem to its leaves, as well as the fruit and root — is poisonous.

The leaves are especially potent in the spring, up to the time the plant flowers.

The toxic compounds found in the plant can cause respiratory failure and disrupt the body’s nervous and cardiovascular systems.

Anderson said it is possible for the toxins in poison hemlock to be absorbed through the skin, too.

“Some of the population could also experience dermatitis from coming in contact with the plant, so covering your skin and wearing eye protection when removing the plant is important,” she said.

Poison hemlock can also be fatal if consumed by livestock. 

According to USDA, cattle that eat between 300 and 500 grams or sheep that ingest between 100 and 500 grams of hemlock – less than a can of beans – can be poisoned. Though animals tend to stay away from poison hemlock, they may eat it if other forage is scarce or if it gets into hay. Animals that ingest it can die from respiratory paralysis in two to three hours. 

Jean Wiedenheft, director of land stewardship for the Indian Creek Nature Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said no one should eat anything from the wild unless they know exactly what they are ingesting.

The carrot family of plants, including poison hemlock, can be particularly treacherous. Water hemlock, a relative of the poison hemlock native to the U.S., is also toxic. Giant hogweed, another member of the carrot family, can grow up to 15 feet tall with leaves that span two to three feet. Marsh said that if humans get sap from the plant on their skin and then go into the sun, it can cause third-degree burns. Wild carrot, another invasive also known as Queen Anne’s Lace, is generally considered safe or mildly toxic.  

Managing the plant

Poison hemlock is a biennial plant, which means it takes two years to complete its life cycle. 

Removal strategies vary depending on where in the life cycle the plants are, where the plants are located, how abundant they are, what time of year it is and the ability of the person trying to manage the plant.

For example, Anderson said flowering plants generally need to be cut out and disposed of as trash. However, Anderson said that using herbicides on the hemlock when the plant is growing close to the ground in its first year is often more efficient and more effective in eradicating the plant.

In some situations, mowing can be an effective option to manage isolated infestations of poison hemlock as well, she said.

“Since (they’re) a biennial species, if we remove plants prior to producing seed, we can eliminate the possibility of new plants or increasing populations of these plants,” Anderson said. “Any location with poison hemlock will need to be monitored for several years.” 

Successful hemlock management comes back to prevention.

“We often talk about the species this time of year because the white flowers atop the tall stems are very obvious on the landscape, but the species exists for the rest of the year as a relatively unassuming rosette of leaves on the ground that people don’t think of until they see the flowers, when it is too late for most effective management strategies,” Anderson  said. “Every time a plant is allowed to produce seed, it adds to the soil seed bank and creates more future management challenges.”

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

‘Highly toxic’ hemlock widespread in Midwest — and spreading is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A researcher surveys wild rice on the Pine River. (Wisconsin SEA Grant)

Through executive orders and the Republican reconciliation bill signed into law in July, the administration of President Donald Trump has cancelled or proposed the cancellation of about $75 million in grants and loans meant for climate-focused projects in Wisconsin, according to data collected by the environmental policy group Atlas Public Policy. 

The cancelled projects include money for the state’s Department of Military Affairs to make infrastructure more resilient to climate change and a grant for the Milwaukee-based water quality non-profit Reflo, Inc. to help children in the city learn about sustainability and the environment. 

Since taking office in January, Trump and congressional Republicans have attacked federal government efforts to address climate change by slashing programs and withholding money. Many of the projects that have lost money in Wisconsin were aimed at marginalized communities such as Native American tribes and Milwaukee’s Black residents — putting them in Trump’s crosshairs because of his aversion to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. 

Through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the administration of President Joe Biden targeted billions of dollars to help communities undertake projects meant to help transition to renewable sources of energy, restore local waterways and make homes more energy efficient. 

Under Trump, that money has been clawed back as Republicans have become even more hostile to efforts to address climate change. For example, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents much of northern Wisconsin and is considering running for governor next year, has spent a significant amount of time fighting the construction of solar energy in the state. 

“The loss of this funding represents a profound missed opportunity for Wisconsin, especially for its most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” says Jaclyn Lea, an associate at Atlas Public Policy. “These canceled projects would have supported investments in communities building energy efficiency, workforce development, and climate resilience. The impact of these cancellations will be felt across the state, slowing progress on critical environmental and resilience efforts.” 

Milwaukee energy efficiency

Among the projects that have lost their funding is a grant program under the Inflation Reduction Act to help the city of Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office work with non-profit organizations to help residents of the city’s predominately Black north side and predominately Latino south side connect with programs to make their homes more energy efficient. 

About $200,000 of the $1 million grant would have supported energy audits of 250 homes in the two neighborhoods. Many of the aging homes in the city have problems with old electrical systems, causing energy bills to rise for some of the city’s poorest residents and posing a fire risk. The program would have also helped connect residents with programs to weatherize their homes and remediate lead contamination. 

Erick Shambarger, Milwaukee’s director of environmental sustainability, says the program would have helped the city’s lowest income residents —  who are at the greatest risk of environmental harms —  lower their energy costs while helping the city as a whole cut emissions. 

It was rolled back as part of the tax- and spending-cut mega-bill that congressional Republicans passed this summer and Trump signed into law on July 4. 

“We also have to do a better job of maintaining and improving our existing housing stock,” Shambarger says. “And this was one tool that we had to try to do that, and it got pulled away. And then now you look at all of the other things that the big, ugly bill did in terms of eliminating tax credits for energy efficiency and all of the rest. And so this isn’t just one [decision], there’s a real pullback at the feds to support low- to moderate-income households.” 

He adds that the grant program project highlighted the ways it would help minority communities because that’s what the Biden administration was looking for, but he doesn’t think the program should be controversial. 

“At the end of the day, we are trying to help the people that need the help the most, help them save on their energy bills and help them get their families stabilized, and create better environments for kids, and better environmental conditions for kids to have a better chance in life,” he says. 

Shambarger says that political instability is one of the greatest obstacles to addressing climate change. The instability caused by the Trump administration taking back money the federal government had already promised to deliver makes it more difficult for industries and businesses relying on more predictable government action, he adds. 

“It is just very, very frustrating just to not have the consistency of policy that we need to address the climate crisis,” he says. “It should be frustrating for every American, including our contractors, who have to plan for the future, who have to hire workers with skill sets, and all of that takes time to set up training programs for new industries. It takes time to build partnerships for the financing for all of this.”

Shambarger is particularly frustrated by the federal government canceling contracts in midstream. 

“It’s one thing to say ‘wind down this contract, and maybe you don’t get renewed, and you have time to adjust,’” he says, “but to just terminate stuff without notice, without looking into the particulars of what our program was achieving is really, really disruptive.”

The effects of climate change are here, Shambarger says. Wisconsin and the Midwest have faced days of poor air quality because of wildfires across Canada this summer. Floods have continued to get worse every year. 

Meanwhile, lower-income working Americans are getting less help, “and that’s too bad, because this country, in order for it to really be great, we’ve got to make sure that we are providing really safe and affordable housing that is climate resilient,” he says.

Global warming continues to heighten risks, from wildfire smoke in the Midwest air to floods and wildfires threatening cities, “and all of that threat is not going away,” Shambarger says. “We just appeal to all levels of government to recognize that there is something we can do about this … It’s a benefit to all Americans.”

Brothertown Tribe wild rice restoration 

Another project cancelled by the Trump administration is a $3 million grant meant to help researchers at the University of Wisconsin work with the Brothertown Indian Nation to restore wild rice habitat in the Lake Winnebago watershed and study the effects of that restoration on the lake’s water quality. 

While the project would have helped the tribe connect with a plant that many of the state’s tribes view as sacred, it would also have served as a wetland restoration project on the drinking water source for hundreds of thousands of people in the Fox River valley. Wetland restoration is a major tool for improving water quality because wetlands can serve as a sort of filter to block potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrates from running off of farm fields and into the water system. 

“There’s over 200,000 people that rely on Winnebago alone for drinking water, and we know the positive impact of having better health for that water,” Jessica Ryan, the tribe’s vice chair, says. “And the community has been trying to improve the water quality for a long period of time in that area. But there’s, there’s a long way to go yet. There’s tremendous negative impacts that have happened from prior generations. So we need to keep our foot on the gas.” 

The grant was meant to fund five years of rice seeding and studying to see if the rice population can be increased and if that increase can improve the quality of water, both for drinking and for supporting populations of fish such as sturgeon and waterfowl such as geese and ducks. The grant was designed as a collaboration between indigenous and western methods of science and involved a number of the state’s tribes as well as local groups and farmers.

“We’d like to have the support of all of the state and the federal politicians to support us because we see the similarities in these interests,” Ryan says. “We see how it lifts up the entire community. Regardless of whether we’re American Indian or not, we have this common core value of looking after the land and the water.”

Those values are shared by local farmers and by the large tribal communities in the area — along with the Brothertown, the Oneida, the Stockbridge and the Menominee, she says. 

The Brothertown Indian Nation began in 18th century New England as a community of Christian Native Americans. The tribe later moved west to Wisconsin to avoid the conflicts over land that pushed out most of the East Coast’s native populations. The tribe settled east of Lake Winnebago. 

But in 1838 the federal government then tried to force the tribe out of Wisconsin and into Kansas. Looking for a way to prevent the government from taking their land, the tribe requested the allotment of their land and U.S. citizenship. Members believed that this would allow private ownership of their land and protect the tribe. 

But unbeknownst to the members, this agreement terminated the federal government’s recognition of the tribe — ending its status as a sovereign nation. The tribe continues to work toward once again being recognized by the federal government. But Ryan says that the Trump administration’s cancellation of the Brothertown grant was especially painful because it was another promise to the tribe broken by the U.S. government. 

“The federal government, in my opinion, has an opportunity to make it, to do the right thing, and they have chosen not to do the right thing,” she says. “They’ve chosen to do the opposite. And I don’t know what’s behind that decision making, right? Like, I don’t know if it’s a political decision, if it’s a racial decision, I don’t know what that is, but to us as the recipients who worked diligently, we’ve complied with all that’s been expected of us. We followed the rules, right? And the application process, it was a competitive process. We were selected. And to have the government again unilaterally go back on its word, it’s pretty devastating.” 

Because the tribe isn’t recognized, it has very little resources. All of its budget comes from charitable support, grants and what the tribe can make selling crafts at its store. It can’t cover the work that was supposed to be covered by a $3 million grant. For now, the tribe has kept one person on its payroll to keep collecting data through the project and is hoping for volunteers to help with the additional work. 

“We had so much good in mind that we were going to do with the funds that would benefit far more than just us,” Ryan says. “This was going to have a tremendous positive impact on the entire community within the watershed. It’s not just something that was going to look after our people or a small group of people. This was intended to have a statewide positive impact.”

The research the tribe wants to continue collecting “is something that can be used on a larger model for the entire region,” Ryan says.  “This is a long-term ecological restoration effort, and we are three years into this project, and it’s a really critical, pivotal moment.”

The stormwater pond at the Emerald Sky Dairy in St. Croix County that was polluted after a 2016 manure spill. A new survey finds that waste produced in the St. Croix River watershed is as much as if more than 3 million people lived there. (Wisconsin DNR photo)

The waste produced by livestock in the St. Croix River watershed is equivalent to 3.25 million more people living in the region, according to a study conducted by a retired University of Iowa professor on behalf of local clean water activists. 

The study, conducted by Dr. Chris Jones, who studied water quality and agriculture at Iowa, totals the number of beef cattle, dairy cows, hogs, chickens and turkeys across the river’s watershed in Minnesota and Wisconsin, calculates the amount of waste those animals excrete in terms of nitrogen, phosphorus and solids. It also  projects  how many  humans it would take to produce that much waste. 

“Some of these nutrients from the manure get into our streams, we know that,” says Jones, who has authored a book about the effect of factory hog farming on the water in his home state. “And so, since the waste is not treated, and since the distribution of it on the fields is not very regulated … this volume of waste certainly makes the river and its tributaries more vulnerable to nutrient groups.”

In recent years, western Wisconsin has become the site of the state’s most intense fights over factory farming. Most of the state’s largest farms, known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), have been in the eastern part of the state. But large agricultural companies have been working to expand factory farming operations across western Wisconsin’s Driftless Region and the St. Croix watershed. 

That effort to expand has sparked a growth in local opposition. A number of communities have worked to pass local ordinances regulating how and when a factory farm can be built or expanded within their borders. Industry groups have filed lawsuits to block those efforts. 

Community members have also worked to stop or change permitting decisions by the state Department of Natural Resources for the expansion of factory farms. 

“I think it’s very important for citizens to realize that the counties and other local governments retain some power in being able to zone their land for the construction of these CAFOs because, as I said in Iowa, when the counties lost control, that’s when the big expansion occurred,” Jones says.

Despite local opposition, CAFOs have continued to grow, causing increased amounts of nutrients in the local water systems. Runoff and manure spills have caused massive fish kills in local streams, beaches have regularly been closed due to excessively high levels of pollutants and the groundwater — the sources of drinking water for most rural residents — has been found to contain high levels of nitrates. 

The St. Croix River has been part of the National Park System as a Wild and Scenic River since 1968 and listed as an “impaired water” by the Environmental Protection Agency since 2012. 

According to Jones’ study, most of the livestock within the watershed is raised on the Wisconsin side of the border. The waste created by just the livestock in Barron County is equivalent to 1.7 million extra people. The livestock waste in St. Croix County is equivalent to 911,000 more people.

The population of Barron County is about 46,000 and of St. Croix County is about 96,000, according to U.S. Census data. 

Jones says it’s within the capabilities of the regulating agencies and university systems in both Minnesota and Wisconsin to calculate the exact number of livestock the watershed is capable of enduring. He says they should do that, because the industry won’t. 

“This is an approach the state should think about in regulating these areas on a watershed by watershed basis, based on what we assume they can endure,” he says. “And that ought to be done for the Saint Croix to protect it.”

He doesn’t expect the St. Croix River’s designation as a national waterway by itself to influence the agriculture industry to change its practices.

“We have evidence here in Iowa, but any special status that the streams have is not going to affect decision making on the ag side, it’s just not,” Jones says. “So the state’s got to try to get in front of this and get their arms around it, because once the horse leaves a barn, it’s too late.”

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U.S. Deputy Agriculture Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden testifies before the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on July 30, 2025. (Photo via committee livestream)

Members of both parties on the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee chastised a U.S. Department of Agriculture official Wednesday for not consulting Congress before proposing to shift thousands of jobs out of the Washington, D.C., area.

USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Alexander Vaden defended the sweeping proposal, which Secretary Brooke Rollins announced with a five-page memo last week, saying it would help bring the department closer to the people the government oversees and lower the cost of living for federal workers, while pledging to work with members of the committee over the next month of planning.

“The secretary’s memorandum was the first step, not the last step,” Vaden told Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the panel, who criticized several aspects of the plan.

The proposal calls for cutting 2,600 of the 4,600 USDA jobs in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia and expanding the department’s footprint in five regional hubs: Raleigh, North Carolina; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

Klobuchar said moving workers out of the capital region hurts the constituencies USDA serves. Agency officials should be nearby to meet with members of Congress, other executive branch offices and trade groups that are based in the nation’s capital, she said.

“Whittling down USDA’s resources to do this crucial work puts rural America at a disadvantage when they don’t have people in the room where it happens,” Klobuchar said.

“We have differences across the aisle,” she continued. “But I think every one of my colleagues understands that you need people that can meet with you, you need people that can go over to the White House so that you don’t have people that don’t have the interests of rural America in mind making all the decisions.”

Vaden said the USDA would keep employees in all of the department’s mission areas in the Washington area.

No advance notice

Even Republicans who said they generally agreed with the aims of the proposal indicated they did not appreciate the lack of notice before it was announced.

“I support finding cost savings where you can, I support the idea of moving people out of the D.C. area and out into the field and closer to the farmer,” North Dakota Republican John Hoeven said. “We support the goals, but we want it to be a process where you work with Congress, with the Senate, both the authorizing committee and the Appropriations Committee on it, and we achieve those results together. And I think that’ll help garner a lot more support for the effort.”

In an opening statement, Chairman John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, thanked Vaden for being available for the hearing on “very, very short notice”

Klobuchar took issue with that description.

“The reason it’s short notice is because the administration put out a half-baked plan with no notice and without consulting agricultural leaders,” she said.

Interest groups were not told ahead of the announcement, Vaden told Klobuchar, though the White House Office of Management and Budget did receive notice.

In response to complaints about the lack of engagement with Congress, Vaden said that lawmakers were notified at the same time as USDA employees, shortly before the announcement was public, and he emphasized that the announcement started a 30-day engagement period that would involve Congress.

He also compared the reorganization plan to the remote work that the department’s workforce used well past the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“From January 2021 to January 2025, the Biden administration, 2,200 employees left Washington, D.C.,” he said. “There was no congressional notice, there was no outcry, there was no committee hearing. For more than 1,700 days, extending well beyond any fair definition of the COVID pandemic, USDA was on a maximum telework footing.”

Midwest Republicans miffed

Some Republicans on the panel offered hearty endorsements to the proposal, including Jim Justice of West Virginia, who used his time to promote the plan instead of questioning Vader.

“I don’t have any questions,” Justice said. “All I’m telling you is, we absolutely need to move and do the very best that we can for these great people.”

But the issue transcended party lines in several cases. Some Republicans whose states were passed over in selecting the proposed hubs had sharp questions for Vaden, while some Democrats who would gain a federal presence under the proposal were less critical.

Hoeven questioned the proposed siting selections, noting Fargo, North Dakota, didn’t have a hub within 600 miles. Fargo is “in the heart of ag country,” Hoeven said.

“What’s magic about five hubs?” he asked. “How much agriculture is there in the state of Utah? We can go through all those things and whether, in fact, it’s actually easier or better for our farmers and our ranchers in North Dakota, given the five hubs you’ve selected.”

Utah ranked 37th in total agricultural income, according to the USDA’s 2023 statistics.

No Nebraska hub

Nebraska Republican Deb Fischer said she had discussed with Vaden, prior to his confirmation hearing this year, the possibility of moving some of the USDA’s workforce outside the Beltway, and advocated for Nebraska as a suitable location.

Because of that, she was underwhelmed by the proposal and its introduction.

“I would have liked to see a process that allowed for Nebraska to demonstrate its strong value proposition,” she said. “So while I do agree with the overreaching goal here, I have to express disappointment in how this has been rolled out and the lack of engagement with Congress prior to the announcement.”

Meanwhile, Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet, whose state would see a regional hub that would also house a consolidated U.S. Forest Service office, said he agreed with the plan’s goals.

“I have long called for the idea of trying to relocate people from Washington, D.C., to parts of the country, to partly to get out of the insulation of this place, to just be closer to, in this case, producers, but others as well,” Bennet said. “So philosophically, that’s where I’ve been.” 

A SNAP sign at a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida. A coalition of state attorneys general is suing the Trump administration to block it from mining personal data from SNAP accounts. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).

A lawsuit filed against the Trump administration by a coalition of attorneys general, including Michigan’s Dana Nessel and Wisconsin’s Josh Kaul, alleges that personal data mined from federal agencies could be used illegally to build a surveillance state unlike the nation has ever seen – putting recipients for things like food assistance at risk if they are being targeted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the president’s U.S. Department of Agriculture is illegally demanding states turn over personal and sensitive information about millions of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, recipients.

SNAP, known as FoodShare in Wisconsin, is a state-administered, federally-funded program that provides billions of dollars in food assistance to tens of millions of low-income families. Personal information is provided to state and federal administrators in order to receive assistance, with an understanding that the information will only be used for SNAP purposes.

Moves by the Trump administration to force various departments to share that data with unrelated agencies, like ICE, sets up a system where the latter could potentially track deportation targets through information provided for SNAP. The USDA has also suggested that it would withhold state funding if states fail to comply with the information sharing mandate, effectively creating a gambit where states must choose residents’ privacy over vital assistance.

“Sensitive information about people shouldn’t be turned over to the federal government simply because they applied for or received assistance through SNAP,” Kaul said in a news release Tuesday. “It’s troubling that the federal government is working to compile this kind of information.”

Nessel, speaking to reporters in a news conference this week that included California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James, said the episode was yet another attempt by the Trump administration to illegally use personal and sensitive data under the guise of fighting abuse and fraud.

“My colleagues and I will not allow this administration to trample on constitutional protections or unlawfully exploit the SNAP program in this way,” Nessel said. “Michigan families deserve to have their personal information protected, and I will keep fighting until they receive exactly that.”

Since taking office, reports have indicated that Trump is amassing a huge database of personal information on Americans using that data for undisclosed purposes, much like immigration enforcement. The USDA demands regarding SNAP information appear to be another step toward that goal, the lawsuit posits.

Bonta touched on the consequences of Trump’s White House having that much personal data on Americans at its fingertips.

“It’s a bait and switch of the worst kind,” Bonta said. “SNAP recipients provided this information to get help feeding their families, not to be entered into a government surveillance database or be used as targets in the president’s inhumane immigration agenda. That’s the reality here. This isn’t about oversight and transparency. This is about establishing widespread surveillance under the guise of fighting fraud.”

Bonta added that the attorneys general in the lawsuit are calling the issue what it is: An illegal data grab designed to scare people away from public assistance programs.

James said the entire framework of Trump’s immigration policies was cruelty on public display, but the new demand regarding SNAP was a new low.

“It is outrageous. It is unacceptable,” James said. “This is not for research or to improve a service that millions count on. They are basically trying to weaponize the SNAP program against immigrant communities in violation of the law, and we collectively will not stand for it. That is the administration’s plans, and they have made it abundantly clear.”

States participating in the lawsuit include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and the District of Columbia.

Erik Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner contributed to this report.

Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jon King for questions: info@michiganadvance.com.

On May 20, 2025, Farm Foundation brought together leaders from across the agriculture sector at our Innovation and Education Campus (IEC) in Libertyville, Illinois, for a critical conversation about the future of our food and agriculture system.

Kicking off the day were two U.S. Secretaries of Agriculture, one Democrat, one Republican, who set the tone for a nonpartisan dialogue grounded in collaboration. Together, farmers, agribusiness leaders, researchers, and policymakers explored how to strengthen the U.S. food and ag system beyond today’s challenges and into the future.

The Summit defined what resilience in food and agriculture truly means:

A resilient food and agriculture system has the ability to produce food, even in the midst of changes and shocks, that sustains the planet and all people through access to safe, affordable, nutritious, and culturally relevant food.

From this shared vision came three key areas for continued collaboration:

1. Creating a policy innovation sandbox to explore new approaches to food and agriculture policy at the local, state, national, and global levels.

2. Advancing rural communities that are vibrant, thriving, and connected to opportunity.

3. Evolving the agricultural extension network to better serve today’s diverse, technology-driven, and rapidly changing sector.

The Summit was not just a conversation; it was a starting point for action. The resulting paper, Toward a Resilient Food and Agriculture Future, authored by Farm Foundation’s Agricultural Economic Fellow Dr. Sunghun Lim, captures the Summit’s insights and lays out a framework for the work ahead.

“The challenges facing agriculture today are deeply interconnected. The Summit was not just about identifying problems, it was about building momentum for actionable solutions,” said Dr. Sunghun Lim.

Now, we invite you to join us in taking the next steps. As we’ve done for the past 90 years, Farm Foundation will continue to organize thought partners and use our think tank/do tank model to drive progress in these three focus areas, sparking ideas and putting them into practice to create real impact.

The Innovation and Education Campus is a gathering place for these vital conversations. A space where anyone in the sector can host meetings, events, and trainings that help shape the future of food and agriculture.

Download the Executive Summary
Read the Full Report
Learn more about hosting an event at the IEC
Watch the video highlighting scenes from the Summit

Join us as we continue this work. Together we can create a more resilient future for food and agriculture.

The post Shaping a Resilient Future for Food and Agriculture appeared first on Farm Foundation.

Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner

The divestment of staff, science and sustainability programs at USDA isn’t just a budget cut; it could be a direct threat to the nation’s food system. Experts warn of far-reaching consequences: unsafe food for consumers, more invasive and economically damaging pests for farmers, and an agriculture industry forced to adapt to climate change with less scientific insight.

“We might see more farming in the dark, essentially,” said Michal Happ, a climate change and rural community expert at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Investigate Midwest spoke with multiple agricultural experts and more than 30 current and former USDA employees to better understand Rollins’ leadership style, her impact on the department and the profound consequences her administration will have for farmers, rural families and consumers.

What emerged was a picture of a leader who has brought sweeping changes and largely embraced President Trump’s agenda of downsizing the federal government. However, Rollins has also been tasked with managing Trump policies that she has privately rebuked and cuts made before she assumed office.

Trump tapped Rollins to head the massive federal department at a crucial time for American agriculture. Farmers are grappling with changing weather patterns, shifting trade policies, and even internal administration critiques of pesticide use — a report from Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission, which Rollins applauded, slammed farms’ pesticide reliance.

Trump has praised Rollins’ performance. In mid-April, as an aside during a press conference, Trump thanked her for lowering egg prices. “Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture, did a great job,” he said. During his first term, she maneuvered into his inner circle and, as Politico reported, has quickly become “one of the most powerful conservatives in the country.”

Rollins has said her mission is to be the voice of farmers in Trump’s cabinet. She appears to have pull with the president, but questions remain about her influence over decisions affecting the USDA and its staff.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, appeared to wield significant control over department operations, at least until recently. It influenced everything from policy language to which USDA offices remain open, according to court records and Rollins’ hearing testimony.

In a statement to Investigate Midwest, the USDA rejected any characterization that Rollins was not solely responsible for department actions.

“The claims you cite are absurd and without merit,” it said. “Secretary Rollins was appointed by President Trump to lead the Department and to insinuate that anyone other than the Constitutionally directed cabinet officer is making the decisions at USDA is unwarranted.”

She’s also been sandwiched between Trump’s signature policy, an extreme stance on immigration, and the reality of agriculture’s labor force.

“We might see more farming in the dark, essentially.”

Michal Happ, a climate change and rural community expert at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Because of immigration raids, some farms’ labor pools have been depleted, and, already, some fields have not been harvested. Farmers have pleaded for relief. In early June, Rollins pushed Trump to pause enforcement on farms, The New York Times reported. After the news broke, Rollins proclaimed she was in lockstep with Trump.

Raids on farms resumed days later, but Trump recently expressed support for giving farmers discretion over undocumented workers.

“Brooke Rollins brought it up, and she said, ‘So, we have a little problem. The farmers are losing a lot of people,’ and we figured it out, and we have some great stuff being written,” he said during a July 4 speech.

On July 8, Rollins said undocumented farmworkers would receive “no amnesty.”

Farming is inherently risky. Making a living depends on good weather and profitable markets. Farmers try to limit variables, but Rollins’ first months have added disorder into the food system, said Mike Lavender, a policy expert for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

“All of it is this theme of creating needless uncertainty and confusion amongst people who are trying to do the exact opposite in order to be successful in their livelihoods, support their families and ultimately support their communities,” he said.

The USDA did not directly answer questions about Rollins’ tenure, and, in a statement, it said she was cleaning up a mess left by her predecessor, Tom Vilsack.

“Secretary Rollins is working to reorient USDA to put Farmers First and be more effective and efficient at serving the American people,” the department said. “President Biden and Secretary Vilsack left USDA in complete disarray, including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them.”

In congressional hearings, Rollins said the USDA, which has lost more than 15,000 employees, has enough staff to fulfill its mission. Trump’s desire to make new deals with trading partners — which is causing confusion and financial anxiety for farmers — will create stability for agricultural producers, Rollins has said.

“I do believe, with every fiber of my being, that this era of unlimited or unprecedented prosperity for the ag community is just around the corner,” Rollins told Congress in June. “I’m just really, really sure of that.”

Rollins has painted the present as being “strikingly similar” to the time of the American Revolution, a period she often invokes in speeches. She has also cast her leadership in Biblical terms, citing Romans 13:12, saying she wears an “armor of light” in her current position.

“There is just a lot of darkness — not with this White House or my current boss, President Trump, or our cabinet, but the government in general,” Rollins told Decision Magazine, a religious publication, during an interview last month.

The USDA did not answer when asked if Rollins views rank-and-file employees as part of the “darkness.” But her management of employees varies drastically from her two predecessors, Vilsack and Sonny Perdue, Trump’s first agriculture secretary.

Perdue was a veterinarian and, as governor of Georgia, had led a large bureaucracy, experience that translated into running a complex federal department in a “thoughtful, analytical way,” said Kevin Shea, a USDA employee for 45 years under Republican and Democrat administrations.

“The first Trump administration at USDA was run very professionally,” Shea said. Now, however, “the USDA political leadership seems to be particularly scornful of its career workforce.”

For instance, very little information filters down to employees. Leadership has not effectively communicated what it wants, so it’s been a “gradual process of learning what is and is not OK,” said Ethan Roberts, president of AFGE Local 3247, a union representing government employees, and a nine-year USDA employee.

Agency staff used to plan months or years ahead, but that’s difficult now because they don’t know if they’ll still have jobs or if the office will exist, said one current employee who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Her two predecessors regularly sent department-wide emails that communicated their goals and priorities, current and former employees said. Rollins seems to have a different audience in mind.

“She just posts on X what she’s doing,” said Laura Dodson, the vice president of AFGE Local 3403 and a longtime USDA employee. X, the social media company owned by Musk, requires an account to view posts. “It just seems everything’s coming from DOGE and whatever the White House is saying about federal employees.”

The first Trump administration also instituted funding freezes and reduced staff, including relocating USDA offices out of Washington, D.C. One of the affected agencies was the Economic Research Service, which provides insights into markets the industry relies on.

In 2019, Dodson and her colleagues were called into a conference room. If their job description was called, they would remain where they had established their lives. The others, the vast majority, would be relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. Employees started crying.

Despite that episode from Trump’s first term, Dodson said, the tone of his second stint is markedly different as DOGE, overseen by Musk until May, has wantonly carved up federal agencies.

“They still maintained a veneer of respectability. They were trying to do this for the greater good,” she said about the USDA under Perdue. “Now, with people like Elon Musk, it’s clear this is not the pursuit of efficiency. It’s the pursuit of cruelty.”

For instance, school nutrition researchers were told to flag any studies that included the word “class” — an attempt to discover funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, a Trump target, said one employee who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Another time, DOGE’s main liaison to the USDA, Gavin Kliger, requested that the word “tracking” be added to the list of words to flag in grants that could be terminated, according to an email included in a lawsuit.

“Tracking the exact carbon output of soybean yields does not provide a direct benefit to farmers,” he reasoned in an email to staff, “and we can reallocate that funding in a way that more directly benefits farmers.”

Kliger’s LinkedIn resume does not show any experience in agriculture. He graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2020 and has worked exclusively for tech and artificial intelligence companies. He has helped slash staff and funding at other agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It’s unclear how he came to this understanding about carbon tracking.

Carbon is essential to soil health, producing higher yields. Knowing how much carbon is escaping their soil can help farmers adopt better soil management techniques. This not only helps farmers grow more efficiently but helps keep the plant from warming. Soy industry groups have expressed the importance of tracking carbon footprints.

Also, under a Biden-era rule, measuring carbon output helps put money directly in farmers’ pockets — they can sell their output on carbon offset markets.

Despite this misguided reasoning, Kliger appears to have had considerable influence at the USDA.

In the same email, he said he wanted to surpass DOGE’s goal of cutting $120 million in climate-focused grants by a certain date. “I spoke with the Secretary tonight who was supportive of these initiatives – working on getting a memo formalized for her signature in parallel,” he wrote.

Kliger did not respond to requests for comment to his USDA email address. The USDA did not respond when asked about the email or how much influence Kliger had.

“All decisions made at the USDA are at the direction of secretary Rollins to best fulfil (sic) president trumps (sic) agenda,” the department said.

Kliger appears to have moved on. The USDA said his access to the National Finance Center, which manages employee payroll, has been “deactivated due to lack of use. … We would refer you to” the Small Business Administration.

While voices with no agricultural experience have been elevated, those with expertise — USDA employees — have been pushed aside and silenced, current and former employees said.

One skirmish between DOGE and the USDA’s rank-and-file has involved the Trump administration’s return-to-office policies. Some Republican leaders and Musk have claimed that allowing employees to work remotely is a waste.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced remote work for staffers at the Farm Service Agency, which helps farmers access federal funding. As the year progressed, Perdue, the agriculture secretary at the time, considered calling workers back to the office.

However, an internal study found that employees had actually been more efficient, said Charles Dodson, a 30-year FSA veteran who retired late last year.

Despite that, Trump ordered remote workers back to offices when he retook the presidency. At the same time, DOGE began canceling leases of local offices around the country.

At a May hearing, members of Congress accused Rollins of being unaware that local FSA offices were being closed. Rollins did not deny the accusation. Then at a June hearing, she said the General Services Administration, a DOGE target, was behind the closures. (Some offices have since reopened.)

On the ground, the situation has caused confusion and consternation for USDA employees.

When one employee reported to a new office, they were told they weren’t on the list of transfers. How could they follow the order to report to an office if they weren’t allowed in? Another USDA employee, a researcher, was ordered to report to a Forest Service trailer in the woods. And another employee, according to NPR, was told to report to a shed where a boat was stored.

The USDA has also intimidated its workforce, current and former employees said.

According to Roberts, the department veteran and union representative, USDA scientists have been instructed to deflect questions from university researchers — their frequent collaborators — about the agency’s internal affairs.

“They’re being told to say those things for fear it looks like the USDA is silencing them,” he said, “which they are.”

Surveillance also has increased. While the government has used software to monitor employee emails for years, the Trump administration has altered it to detect emails sent to a personal or college account. As part of a leak investigation, one staffer was placed on administrative leave after emailing their personal account, even though it did not contain the leaked material officials were looking for.

The USDA did not respond to a question about the leak investigation.

Some employees have responded by doing only what is asked of them, not going above and beyond. Dodson, the retiree, recounted what a current staffer told him: “I’m afraid to do anything else. I just want to survive and not get fired.”

The lack of staff is a major obstacle, Shea said.

“There couldn’t be a worse time to lower our guard,” he said. “APHIS cannot do its job with that level of personnel. It simply cannot do it. I’ve never been more concerned about the agency’s ability to carry out its mission going forward.”

The USDA has implemented a hiring freeze, but in April it exempted APHIS. The agency has posted job listings online.

“Secretary Rollins will not compromise the critical work of the Department,” the USDA said. The exempted positions “carry out functions that are critical to the safety and security of the American people, our national forests, the inspection and safety of the Nation’s agriculture and food supply system.”

Another challenge Rollins has faced is trade, the lifeblood of U.S. agriculture.

When Trump returned to office, he generated chaos in the agricultural markets by starting a trade war and implementing higher tariffs. In response, Rollins has embarked on a global tour to establish new trade partners.

She has announced a few “Make Agriculture Great Again trade wins.” She recently proclaimed that Namibia, an African country, agreed to accept frozen poultry from the U.S. The Biden administration had opened the market after allaying the country’s concerns about bird flu. Also, she declared Costa Rica accepting U.S. dairy a win for Trump. An industry trade group said the “win has been several years in the making.”

Rollins has said repeatedly that the agricultural trade deficit — the U.S. imports more products from overseas than it exports — is bad for the country. The tariffs were intended to address the deficit, but the narrative hit a snag in early June.

Politico reported the USDA had delayed a regularly scheduled report because it showed Trump’s tariffs could exacerbate the trade deficit. Days later, Rollins defended the delay. “I want to be sure every piece of research we move out is the best, the best-cited, etc.,” she told Congress. (The hearing was about a week after news broke that the MAHA report, which Rollins supported, cited nonexistent studies.)

Perhaps the most pressing issue facing Rollins is helping the agriculture industry as it grapples with climate change, which is altering how farmers grow food and commodities. Rollins, however, has denied the planet is warming.

Her husband is an executive at an oil and gas company, and in a 2018 speech, she said “research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid,” according to Inside Climate News. More recently, she led the America First Policy Institute, which pushes Trump’s agenda. She employed another Trump loyalist, Carla Sands, who once said the idea of climate change is “Marxism to control humanity,” according to Politico.

In January, before Rollins was sworn in, USDA employees were directed to “unpublish any landing pages (on the USDA’s website) focused on climate change,” according to court records. Research involving climate change has also been effectively banned, current employees said. If studies include words such as “climate,” “clean energy,” “sustainable construction” or dozens of others, the research will not be funded.

Climate change is having profound effects on agriculture. For instance, the Corn Belt — considered the prime region for growing the valuable commodity used in everything from soft drinks to gasoline — is inching northward. In decades, instead of Iowa and Illinois, Minnesota and the Dakotas could be America’s breadbasket, researchers have predicted.

More recent research shows that, as the world keeps warming and farming gets harder, U.S. corn production could fall by 40% by century’s end.

If the USDA ignores climate issues, farmers could be struggling alone, said Happ, of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

“They want to adapt to what’s going on,” he said. “They want to still have their land there and steward it for the next generation or two. Without those resources, they’re going to just have to figure it out on their own.”

The USDA did not respond when asked about Rollins’ household’s financial stake in fossil fuels. At a congressional hearing, Rollins agreed with a representative who said sound policy follows sound science. The USDA did not respond when asked why the USDA was not following climate change science.

The USDA has forced out 98 of 167 food safety scientists at the Agricultural Research Service, a department arm that studies how to prevent deadly pathogens, such as E. coli or Salmonella, from entering the food supply.

Foodborne illnesses could become more prevalent because the work the scientists were doing will likely just end, said Roberts, the union representative who works for the Agricultural Research Service.

“Who knows what we’ve lost? What discoveries or products that were going to be invented that we’ll just never see?” Roberts said. “We’ll be stuck with the tools we have now.”

A robust food safety system, with research and vigilant monitoring, is necessary to help prevent foodborne illnesses, which not only can hospitalize consumers but also have long-lasting health consequences, said Barbara Kowalcyk, a longtime food safety researcher who is now at George Washington University. In a 2013 study, Kowalcyk and her colleagues showed foodborne infections could lead to, among other conditions, chronic kidney disease, arthritis and cognitive deficits.

An example of science and government oversight working in concert to save lives stems from a deadly outbreak in the 1990s, she said. After eating undercooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box, more than 700 people fell ill and four children died.

The scandal put the USDA’s food safety system under an intense microscope, and the department changed how it protected America’s meat supply. Instead of eyeing and smelling a carcass, the USDA began testing for pathogens, a monumental task to implement.

The original testing procedure was first developed in the 1960s and refined over the decades. Since the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service began using the system — named Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point — cases of foodborne illness from beef have declined dramatically.

“Lots of effort went into that,” Kowalcyk said. “We don’t see the same level of outbreaks in ground beef that we used to.”

Rollins plans on altering the USDA’s, and the country’s, future through her actions. Cutting funding to farmers, axing scientists, instilling fear in remaining employees — it’s about changing the country’s course.

“It isn’t just about the next four years,” she told Breitbart in May. “It’s about the next 250 years.”

But it could all backfire on farmers, rural communities and consumers, said Lavender, with the national sustainable agriculture coalition.

“The draining of expertise at USDA,” he said, “whether that’s scientific expertise or just expertise of people who have been there for a period of time and have built up knowledge —  it will ultimately come home to roost.”

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This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To republish, go to the original and consult the Investigate Midwest republishing guidelines.

A plan to repair Milwaukee’s Mitchell Park Domes received a key funding commitment from Milwaukee County. 

The post Plan to repair Milwaukee’s Mitchell Park Domes gets key funding from Milwaukee County  appeared first on WPR.

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A few years ago, Holly Jones started studying the micro-climate and the topography on her family farm in Crawfordsville, Iowa, about 40 miles south of Iowa City. Jones said learning more about the landscape of her fifth generation flower farm helped her recognize some of the ways weather and climate change could affect her operation.   

“There are some areas of our land that are a little higher than others,” Jones said. “That’s going to impact, for example, when we’re looking out for frost advisories or frost concerns really early in the season or the end.”   

Around this time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture updated its plant hardiness zones map, which divides the United States into 13 zones based on average annual minimum temperatures in a given time period. 

Todd Einhorn, an associate professor in the Department of Horticulture at Michigan State University, said simply put plant hardiness zones help gardeners and farmers determine which plants are most likely to survive winters in a specific location. 

Jones’ farm, called Evergreen Hill, is currently in zone 5b. The USDA found that for her area the temperature had increased by 1 degree Fahrenheit between 2012 and 2023 – a trend experts say will continue in the Upper Midwest.

In response to the changing climate and her deeper understanding of her land, Jones created “crossover plans” for the farm, planting flower varieties with overlapping bloom times. If one species is late to flower or runs its course early, she has other plants that can fill in as the farm’s “focal flower” at any given time. 

Jones works to be transparent with customers about whether they can have certain flowers by a specific date when she takes orders.

She said she and her team have learned that they must be flexible when it comes to farming in a changing climate since she does not have control over growing conditions.  

“We can prepare as much as we want, but there’s so much variability now in growing, especially in the ways that we grow that you just have to be prepared to pivot and adapt,” Jones said.

Jones won’t be the only one adapting. 

Plant hardiness zones are shifting northward nationwide as the country continues to warm, affecting farmers, gardeners and producers across the country. The biggest changes in the coming decades are predicted to be in the Upper Midwest. The Midwest produces 27% of the nation’s agricultural goods.

What are plant hardiness zones?  

The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone map has 13 zones, which serve as guidelines for growers on what kind of plants will grow well in their area. 

“Hardiness zones are meant to at least delineate which species or cultivars of species could be planted based on their survival,” said Einhorn, who specializes in plant hardiness science, particularly with fruit tree species.  

Each zone covers about 10 degrees — for example, Iowa lies primarily in zone 5, which means its coldest temperatures range from -20 degrees to -10 degrees Fahrenheit on average. Each zone is further divided into 5 degree half zones — the northern half of Iowa is in 5a, the southern half in 5b. 

Madelynn Wuestenberg, an agricultural climatology extension specialist with Iowa State University, said that plant hardiness zones are defined by their average coldest temperatures. The averages are calculated over 30 years.   

In 2023, using new averages, the USDA updated the map, moving about half of the country up by half a plant zone, meaning average minimum temperatures rose by zero to 5 degrees in the affected places.

Why are the zones shifting north?  

Climate Central, a nonprofit researching climate change and how it affects people, analyzed 243 locations around the United States and found that about 67% of the locations studied based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data have already shifted to warmer planting zones from the mid-1900s to present.

The researchers found that the Northwest and the Southwest, along with Alaska, have been the most affected to date. 

With unabated climate change about 90% of locations examined will likely shift to warmer planting zones by the middle of this century. The Upper Midwest is predicted to be affected most.  

Wuestenberg said winter temperatures in the Midwest are becoming warmer on average, compared to decades past.  

“What we saw from the 1981 to 2010 climatology versus the 1991 to 2020 climatology is we’re really starting to see warming across the U.S.,” Wuestenberg said. “And this has been observed for a long time, and really it’s a pretty consistent overall warming, but the specific amount of warming varies region to region across the U.S.”   

Of the cities with the highest predicted temperature change between now and mid-century, a majority of the top 25 are in the Mississippi River Basin. 

Madison, Wisconsin, for example, is projected to switch from zone 5b to 6a as the average coldest temperature is expected to increase by 8.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Jefferson City, Missouri, will likely change from zone 6b to zone 7b as the area’s average cold temperatures are projected to increase by 8.3 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Dubuque, Iowa, the average coldest temperatures are expected to rise by 8.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and producers will go from zone 5a to 6a.

Average cold temperatures in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are on course to warm by 8.2 degrees Fahrenheit, and the region is expected to jump an entire planting zone to 6a. 

The shift in plant hardiness zones could force some growers across the country to select plants that are adapted to a wider and warmer range of temperatures to survive warmer winters and earlier frosts and thaws.  

In some cases, that could mean new opportunities. 

Dean Colony runs Colony Acres Family Farm in North Liberty, Iowa. On his 200-acre farm, he grows pumpkins, corn, soybeans and zinnias. 

His farm is currently in plant hardiness zone five, but Colony said it could be a matter of time before Iowa is able to produce peaches like Missouri and Kentucky can. 

“How many more years is it going to be? I mean, we could grow peaches in Iowa, but it seems like they grow them way better down there,” Colony said. “So is it a matter of time before that comes here?” 

Wuestenberg said one challenge with the shifting zones is that they are based on climatological averages and do not take atypical and significant frost or freeze events into account, which can be challenging for producers. 

Who will be most affected?  

Wuestenberg said gardeners and fruit tree producers will likely be more concerned about the shifting zones, rather than row crop producers. 

Fruit trees and vines need a certain number of chilling hours, which is the minimum period of cold weather a fruit tree needs to blossom. 

For example, Einhorn said most apple trees require about a thousand chilling hours in the winter to break their dormancy period and bloom in the spring.  

But with winters warming, even by a few degrees, apple trees will want to break dormancy earlier.

“Instead of being at 30 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, maybe now the days are at 34 (degrees Fahrenheit) and that little bit of warming actually has a humongous effect on a tree,” Einhorn said.  

The apple trees could start flowering in late February or early March.

“Unfortunately, what can happen is overall, winter may have been warmer, but we still might get a March, April frost. And once that happens, those buds, those flowers, are exposed to that cold temperature, and then it kills them,” Wuestenberg said.   

This could lead to reduced fruit yields later in the season.  

But Einhorn said there are ways that producers can work within the unpredictable conditions.  

For example, there are various methods for raising temperatures for trees during a freeze, including using fans to pull warm air out of the atmosphere and running water over plants. There are also research efforts underway breeding new plants that have either delayed blooms or can withstand the new conditions.   

Meanwhile, farmers will continue to adapt. Jones, the flower farmer, has noticed strong winds and storms coming through the eastern Iowa region. She’s planted sunflowers in windier areas of the farm because they can withstand stronger gusts. More delicate flowers go near trees for natural protection. She also uses netting to help stabilize flowers from winds, rains and storms. 

 “At the end of the season, we’re at the mercy of our climate and the weather,” Jones said. “And that can greatly impact what we have in any given season.”  

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

A warming climate is changing growing conditions, shifting planting zones northward is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Dec. 18, 2017.  (USDA photo by Preston Keres)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to slash its presence in the Washington, D.C., area by sending employees to five regional hubs, Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday.

The department wants to reduce its workforce in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia from 4,600 to less than 2,000 and add workers to regional offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

The department will also maintain administrative support locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Minneapolis and agency service centers in St. Louis; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Missoula, Montana, according to a memorandum signed by Rollins.

The effort, which the memo said is expected to take years, will move the USDA geographically closer to its constituents of farmers, ranchers and foresters, Rollins said in a press release.

“American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers, and producers we are mandated to support,” Rollins said.

“President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country. We will do so through a transparent and common-sense process that preserves USDA’s critical health and public safety services the American public relies on.”

U.S. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, called the announcement “very exciting news for Hoosiers.”

“Great to see these services move outside of DC and into places like Indiana that feed our nation,” he wrote on X.

Top Ag Democrat critical

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, slammed the plan, saying it would diminish the department’s workforce and that Rollins should have consulted with Congress first before putting it in place.

The move by President Donald Trump’s first administration to move USDA’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture out of Washington, D.C., resulted in a “brain drain” in the agencies, as 75% of affected employees quit, Craig said.

“To expect different results for the rest of USDA is foolish and naive,” she said Thursday. “Sadly, farmers will pay the price through a reduction in the quality and quantity of service they already receive from the department.

She called on the committee’s chairman, Pennsylvania Republican Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, to hold a hearing on the issue.

“That the Administration did not consult with Congress on a planned reorganization of this magnitude is unacceptable,” Craig added. “I call on Chairman Thompson to hold a hearing on this issue as soon as possible to get answers. We need to hear from affected stakeholders and know what data and analysis USDA decisionmakers used to plan this reorganization.”

Pay rates

The USDA release also appealed to the plan’s cost efficiencies. By moving workers out of the expensive Washington, D.C. area, the department would avoid the extra pay workers in the region are entitled to, the department said.

Federal workers are eligible for increased pay based on the cost of living in the city in which they’re employed.

Washington has among the highest rates, boosting pay for workers in that region by 33%. Other than Fort Collins, whose workers also earn more than 30% more than their base pay, the other hub cities range from 17% in Salt Lake City to 22% in Raleigh, according to the release.

The plan includes vacating several D.C.-area office buildings that are overdue for large maintenance projects, the department said.

The department plans to retain its presence at the Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building and Yates Building, both in D.C., and the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland.

It will vacate the South Building in D.C., Braddock Place in Alexandria, Virginia, and Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland. The George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville will serve as an additional office location during the reorganization, but will also be sold or transferred once the reorganization is complete, the memo said.

Each of USDA’s mission areas will still have a presence in the nation’s capital, according to the release.

But the plan includes consolidating several functions into regional offices in an effort to “eliminate management layers and bureaucracy,” according to the memo.

Forest Service

The U.S. Forest Service, a key USDA agency, will phase out its nine regional offices primarily into a single location in Fort Collins. The agency will retain a small state office in Alaska and an Eastern office in Athens, Georgia, according to the memo.

The Agriculture Research Service will also consolidate from 12 offices to the five regional hubs.

And a series of support functions would be centralized, according to the memo. 

After more craft breweries closed than opened across the nation for the first time in 20 years, a pair of Wisconsin craft brewery owners say they’re adapting to the times.

The post National downturn in craft breweries has Wisconsin brewers unfazed appeared first on WPR.

States will soon have to pay millions of dollars more for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program under the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The post SNAP will soon cost states millions of dollars more. What does that mean for food access? appeared first on WPR.

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About this video

The Local Food Purchase Assistance program, or LFPA, was a federal program that awarded states two-year grants to help small farmers invest in their local food systems while growing their businesses. 

The Trump administration gutted the program in March, just as farmers started placing seed orders. The timing particularly affected livestock farmers who often need to commit to the size of their herd and harvest over a year in advance. 

Wisconsin Watch staff writer Bennet Goldstein spent weeks talking with producers affected by the loss of LFPA, including Jess D’Souza, a pork farmer in Dane County. During one of several visits to her farm, he and photojournalist Patricio Crooker watched meat processors harvest her pigs to fully appreciate how food travels from farm to plate.

On a separate visit to the farm, Joe Timmerman photographed Jess and her herd of Gloucestershire Old Spots pigs, documenting many beautiful moments on the piece of agricultural land that she purchased nearly a decade ago and eventually named Wonderfarm. 

Collectively, the images tell a story of life, death and resilience on a small farm – but  some viewers may find some of the images in the video uncomfortable or even emotionally upsetting. Our decision to include them was the result of many discussions that touch on long-standing debates in newsrooms about when it is justified to publish or showcase disquieting images related to death, injury or violence. 

Some of the questions raised in these discussions don’t have simple answers. For instance, Bennet wonders whether our desire to outsource meat production to others —  and hide the bloody parts of that business — contributes to the characterization of these photos as being in poor taste or emotionally disturbing.

We welcome your thoughts and feedback on any of the issues and questions raised in this reporting.

As for the LFPA program’s future, Wisconsin producers hope to see funding restored in the yet-to-be-debated federal Farm Bill. 

Video: life, death and resilience at Wonderfarm is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Raccoon River weaves past downtown Des Moines, Iowa, in June. One of the primary drinking water sources for the region, the river has high nitrate levels that have led to water restrictions for some 600,000 customers. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

For nearly a month, hundreds of thousands of Iowans have not been allowed to water their lawns — even though there’s no drought.

Local authorities previously asked the public to refrain from washing cars and filling pools. And some cities turned off splash pads in the height of summer heat.

While such measures are common during dry periods, there’s no shortage of water: Rather, the water in and around Des Moines contains too much nitrate, a natural component of soil and a byproduct of commercial fertilizer and livestock manure. Persistent rainfall has flushed nutrients out of fertilized fields into streams and rivers.

While the water bans are temporary, they’re the starkest sign yet of the state’s long-brewing struggle with high nitrate levels in streams and rivers that supply drinking water.

“It’s a big deal: the first time ever that lawn watering has been banned,” said Tami Madsen, executive director of Central Iowa Water Works, a regional water authority serving 600,000 people.

Federal law limits nitrate levels in drinking water because of its association with infant asphyxia, also known as blue baby syndrome. And a growing body of research has found links between nitrate consumption and cancer.

While Iowa’s problems are uniquely severe, nitrate levels are a rising concern in other regions, from California to the Chesapeake Bay. And climate change is expected to worsen the problem as more intense cycles of drought and severe storms increase farm runoff.

Iowa’s concentration of fertilized row crops and massive livestock confinements that produce tons of nitrogen-rich manure have caused concerns over increased nitrate levels for years. And the state’s unique underground system of farm drainage pipes quickly pumps nitrate and other nutrients into streams and rivers.

The water system serving the Des Moines metro area has invested heavily in nitrate filtration and removal equipment. The primary facility in Des Moines, one of the largest nitrate removal systems in the world, costs $16,000 per day to operate, Madsen said.

“I’m confident in our ability to continue to provide safe drinking water,” Madsen said. “It’s just going to be at what cost.”

More frequent and extreme storms because of climate change will heighten the problems nationwide, said Rebecca Logsdon Muenich, an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Arkansas.

Because nitrogen travels with water, nitrate levels are especially hard to control during times of severe weather.

Muenich said farm conservation practices such as establishing wetlands and landscape buffers can help keep nitrogen out of water supplies. But the growth of the livestock industry, availability of cheap crop fertilizer and lack of regulation over nitrogen application make nitrate levels hard to control.

“We’ve kind of put ourselves in a bind unless we start investing in better technologies or more conservation,” she said.

The role of agriculture

As hundreds of thousands of residents were being asked to conserve water last month, a group of 16 experts released a years-in-the-making report analyzing the quality of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, the main sources of drinking water for the Des Moines region.

The researchers found that central Iowa rivers have some of the nation’s highest nitrate levels, routinely exceeding the federal drinking water standard. While some pollutants are naturally occurring, the researchers concluded that most of the nitrogen in the two rivers comes from farmland.

Commissioned in 2023 by Polk County, the state’s most populous county and home to Des Moines, the report underscored the connection between industrial agriculture and water quality.

Larry Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Iowa who worked on the report, said Iowa’s problem spreads to other areas: Iowa waterways export hundreds of millions of pounds of nitrogen per year, much of it flowing into the Mississippi River and eventually the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone.

He said water restrictions may become more common as more cities confront high nitrate levels.

“This is happening more frequently and it’s going to continue to happen more frequently,” he said.

Weber said individual farmers aren’t necessarily to blame for the crisis. They’re doing their best to survive market demands and operate within federal farm policy. But he said the broader industry and the state could do more to invest in conservation methods to prevent pollution.

He noted that Iowa lawmakers in 2023 cut $500,000 for a water quality monitoring network across the state. While the Iowa Nutrient Research Center received a short-term grant to stay open, Weber said next year it will shut down 75 sensors that measure nitrate and other pollutants in state waters.

“The agricultural system doesn’t want this unfortunately difficult information to be made available,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Iowa Farm Bureau referred questions to the state agriculture department.

In a statement to Stateline, Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig, a Republican, said many Iowa groups are working on conservation and infrastructure projects to improve water quality.

“We’re not interested in stoking animosity between rural and urban neighbors,” the statement said. “Agriculture, conservation, recreation, urban and rural development, and business growth can and must co-exist in Iowa.”

In a lengthy social media post last month, Naig said nitrate levels were primarily driven by weather and stream flows. The secretary said advances in farming practices can help farmers apply fertilizer more efficiently and touted efforts such as new wetlands and structures that reduce stream erosion. But he said the fast-growing Des Moines area also needed to examine its investments in water treatment infrastructure to meet future needs.

“The blame game is unproductive,” he wrote.

On Tuesday, Naig’s department announced a $1.9 million water quality project upstream of Des Moines. That project will install landscape buffers and bioreactors to help reduce runoff of nitrate and other nutrients. The department is contributing $244,000 of that money.

Matt McCoy, chair of the Polk County Board of Supervisors, said that local government is trying to work with landowners and farmers to prevent water pollution. The county has spent millions on projects to seed cover crops and plant vegetative buffers between fields and waterways to prevent runoff of pollutants, including nitrogen.

“I don’t think we want to disparage agriculture and farming because it’s such a big part of who we are as a state,” McCoy said.

A former Democratic state lawmaker, McCoy said the recent water restrictions and daily news reports on nitrate levels in local rivers have elevated public awareness of water quality concerns.

“There are conversations that I know are happening now that were not happening prior to the restrictions,” he said.

Citizen action

The water restrictions in Iowa sparked an influx of interest from locals in the Izaak Walton League of America’s Nitrate Watch program, which provides volunteers with nitrate test kits and maps the results from across the country.

Heather Wilson, the league’s Midwest Save Our Streams coordinator, said the nonprofit environmental organization received more than 300 inquiries from Iowans during a single week in June. For comparison, the organization received about 500 inquiries from across the nation during the first six months of the year.

While the problems in the Des Moines area are severe, she said, volunteers are recording rising nitrate levels across the state. The project gives people who can often feel helpless an active way to contribute to the understanding of nitrate pollution.

“It’s really empowering to be able to put resources in people’s hands so that they can measure the waterways that they personally care about,” she said.

Retired science teacher Birgitta Meade has been testing nitrates around her rural northeast Iowa home for years both as classroom instruction and for Nitrate Watch.

“They’re higher than I have ever tested at any prior point,” she said. “I feel like I’m meticulously documenting the death of my home and nobody else gives a rip.”

Meade said she’s considering investing in a reverse osmosis system to remove nitrates from her home’s private well. Though her nitrate levels are below the federal drinking water standard, she pointed to the growing body of research linking cancer with consumption of nitrate — even at lower levels.

Meade acknowledged the pressures facing farmers, but she said she grows frustrated every time she drives past giant storage containers full of fertilizer and other farm chemicals.

“These are people who are choosing to poison their neighbors,” she said. “And this is just untenable.”

Small towns struggle

Climate change will only intensify nitrogen pollution, said Thomas Harter, a professor and water researcher at the University of California, Davis. Last year, he worked on research that found drought and heavy rains accelerate the speed of nitrogen absorption into groundwater.

In some parts of California’s Central Valley, nearly a third of drinking and irrigation wells exceed federal nitrogen standards.

“We are ever more productive on the grower side, and that means more fertilizer being used and more fertilizer being lost to groundwater and to streams,” Harter said.

That’s particularly challenging for drinking water systems serving small population bases.

“It gets really expensive for really small systems and it’s also a lot of maintenance,” he said.

That’s a reality currently facing Pratt, Kansas, a community of about 6,500 people, where some wells have recorded nitrate levels above the federal standard.

City Manager Regina Goff said nitrate levels are pushing the community’s pursuit of a new water treatment facility that’s expected to cost upward of $45 million. The city’s proposed 2025 budget totaled about $35.7 million.

Goff said the city is exploring financing options, including potential grants. But she said it’s frustrating for the town to spend so much to meet regulatory standards for safe drinking water, which she characterized as an “unfunded mandate.”

Currently, nearly a quarter of the city’s groundwater supply is unavailable because of high nitrate levels. But the city must notify residents of high nitrate levels even in wells that are not pumping.

“It causes a panic,” Goff said. “That’s been a hard pill for us to swallow as a city — that we have to alarm our population even though we know there’s no possibility of harm.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name of the Izaak Walton League of America.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Now that work on the state budget is complete, environmental groups and residents of communities affected by PFAS contamination believe progress can still be made on getting money out the door to help remediate water pollution across the state. 

Since the last biennial budget was passed, $125 million in funds meant to help with cleaning up contamination of water from PFAS has been sitting untouched with no legislative mechanism for getting that money out to communities.

PFAS, a family of man-made chemical compounds known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t break down in the environment, have been connected to cancer and other diseases. The chemicals have been used in products such as firefighting foam and household goods such as non-stick pans and fast food wrappers. Communities across the state have found PFAS contamination in their water. 

During the last legislative session, early hopes of compromise crumbled after Democrats and Republicans failed to reach agreement on a provision aimed at protecting “innocent landowners” from being subject to enforcement actions for PFAS contamination under the state’s toxic spills law by the Department of Natural Resources. 

Republicans, including the bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) argued the bill had to include language that protected people who have PFAS contamination on their property through no fault of their own. Democrats said the language in the bill defining innocent landowners was so broad that it would exempt property owners responsible for pollution from being held responsible. 

Ultimately, Gov. Tony Evers vetoed the bill. 

Wimberger and Rep. Tim Mursau (R-Crivitz) authored legislation this year to get the $125 million earmarked for PFAS remediation out the door. 

Sara Walling, Clean Wisconsin’s water and agriculture program director, says she’s “hopeful” that discussions between the Republican bill authors, Evers and affected residents have been productive. 

“There is opportunity now I think that the budget is done for Wimberger and others, of course, to pay attention, put a little energy into this, and really sit down and hash out the provisions in there, and get to a point that there’s something hopefully that we can all live with, and that will get the money to impacted communities and private well owners and all the things that the money is intended to be used for,” Walling says. 

While people see progress being made, there are still objections to the legislation. Wimberger and Mursau have proposed two bills, one of which exempts certain groups of people from enforcement under the spills law. 

Exempting ‘innocent landowners’

The exemptions include anyone who spread biosolids or wastewater contaminated with PFAS onto a field while in compliance with a DNR permit; owns land on which contaminated biosolids were spread under a permit; a fire department, public airport or municipality that used PFAS-contaminated firefighting foam to train for or respond to emergencies; solid waste disposal facilities that accepted PFAS and anyone that owns, leases, manages, or contracts for property on which PFAS has moved through the groundwater (unless they caused the contamination on another piece of property). 

Earlier this year, Evers suggested he’d support exempting farmers and residents from being held financially responsible for cleaning up PFAS contamination if they unknowingly caused it by spreading contaminated biosolids. 

But Walling says she’d like to see that language tightened further to make sure it does not create a loophole for responsible parties. 

“The provisions that are laid on that out there now just provide far too big of a loophole for who would be considered an innocent landowner in the current bill language,” she said. “And we really want to see that tightened so that truly innocent landowners, the passive receivers, the farmers out there who unknowingly were accepting municipal biosolids … those are the innocent landowners that I know that the authors are trying to protect.” 

What’s an allowable level of PFAS?

The other bill creates the mechanisms and grant programs through which the $125 million would be awarded to affected communities. 

Doug Oitzinger is the former mayor and a current city councilmember of Marinette and a founder of a group of community members fighting to clean up PFAS pollution in his area from the manufacture of fire suppression technologies by Tyco/Johnson Controls. 

Oitzinger says he’s wary of a provision in the bill that exempts private property owners who don’t qualify as innocent landowners from enforcement under the spills law unless the level of PFAS present violates an existing state or federal standard. The federal government doesn’t regulate groundwater and for years the state Department of Natural Resources has been unable to promulgate an administrative rule that sets the allowable amount of PFAS in groundwater. 

The DNR failed once because of a deadlocked vote on the state Natural Resources Board and a second time because the proposed rule had a potential economic impact greater than $10 million and therefore required approval of the full Legislature under a law known as the REINS Act. 

The DNR is currently working on the economic impact analysis of another proposed groundwater standard. Oitzinger says he’s doubtful that proposal will stay clear of the REINS Act. So, he says, he’s working with Mursau to include a groundwater standard in the bill. 

The most significant amendment Oitzinger is fighting for in the legislation is the creation of a temporary standard for the regulation of PFAS in Wisconsin’s groundwater. 

“We’ve been working to see if legislatively, we can get something that does not undermine the spills law to get the $125 million out the door, that the governor would sign, that we would be in support of and, at the same time, establish some kind of interim groundwater standard for PFAS,” Oitzinger says. 

As someone fighting for a community that’s been heavily polluted with PFAS, Oitzinger says his goal is to find a compromise that helps people get clean water, even if environmental and industry groups aren’t fully satisfied. 

“It doesn’t do us any good to get into our respective camps and not find common ground,” he says. “And then the bill reaches the governor’s office and he vetoes it. That’s not helping anybody, so we’ve got to find compromise. Some of the environmental groups won’t like it, and certainly I think some of the industry lobbying groups won’t like it, but this is what we’ve got to do.”

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