Reading Time: 6 minutes

All of Greg Thoren’s cows are technically identified by the number on their ear tag. But when he drives around his pastures checking in on his animals, they go by another name: Sweetie. 

“Hey, sweetie,” he reassured one cow — her ear labeled 604. “Hi, honey. You’re okay.”

In the spring, one of Thoren’s daily tasks is tooling around looking for calves that were born overnight. This cow had a newborn.

“You’re okay. You had that baby this morning.”  

He stepped out of the truck, caught hold of the calf and in a few moments had looked it over, tagged its ear and popped back into the truck. He made a couple of notes in a battered pocket notebook and continued on through the fields. 

Thoren comes out to greet his cows most days, bringing a pile of hay in the bed of his old pickup truck as a snack. If he stops for long enough, the herd descends on his truck, eating straight from the bed. 

He’s a regenerative farmer, which means that as much as he cares for his animals, he cares about his soil more. He used to work the land as intensely as any other conventional farmer, but he quit “cold turkey” years ago. 

Now, he’s cover-cropping, rotational-grazing, no-tilling and trying out any other conservation method he wants to experiment with. And it’s showing interesting results: He’s saving a lot of money, his cows are healthier, and his profits are growing. Plus, researchers have shown that these and similar conservation methods reduce soil erosion and water pollution and help to store more carbon in the soil compared to conventional methods. 

He also shares what he’s learned with a group called the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition. The work they do is at the heart of the “farmer-led movement,” a grassroots initiative to put farmers at the center of agricultural innovation, rather than top-down academics or government officials. The movement is well underway in northwest Illinois, and similar examples can be found throughout the U.S. and across the globe. 

The coalition believes that one of the most effective ways to make farms more resilient — and more profitable — is to invite people into farmer-led conversations about soil health and water quality. Many farmers in the coalition are trying their own conservation methods and sharing the outcomes at field days and regular meetups.

This shared knowledge is meant to create a community of farmers who are shifting their mindset. They show up to learn from one another and experiment with conservation themselves. The coalition estimates their outreach, education and events have reached hundreds of people.

‘Figuring out practices that will work’

Corn Belt farmers are in the midst of multiple crises. Conventional farming practices are contributing to pollution, erosion and financial misfortune. Farm debt and bankruptcies are rising, and so are prices for inputs like fertilizer, pesticides and fuel. Meanwhile, the prices farmers get for crops like corn, soybeans and wheat are on a downturn. The Midwest lost more than 30,000 farms between 2017 and 2024.

The farmer-led movement offers an answer to these crises.

“Change is what needs to happen,” said Beth Baranski, the organizing secretary for the Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition. “The farmer-led movement allows people to share the risk and minimize the risk. … The key is the farmers on their farms, in their fields, figuring out the practices that will work for them to achieve these goals.” 

Many farmers in the movement are still using conventional practices. It’s not necessarily the goal of the coalition to convince everyone to take on 100% regenerative practices. The group recognizes every farmer comes to it from a different place and has different priorities for their land and operations. Even if they wanted to try regenerative farming practices, razor-thin margins make it financially risky to make the switch. 

Instead, the goal is for farmers to show their neighbors what’s possible and learn from each other. 

And while there are plenty of government programs and grants and incentives that could help in theory, Baranski said many farmers are skeptical about how well they actually work. She said that, generally, they’re more likely to trust another farmer. 

“Somebody coming from the corporate world or from an institution … and saying, ‘This is what you need to do,’ is not as effective as a neighboring farmer who has tried one practice and found it beneficial,” she said. 

‘Farmers tend to push it’

The coalition offers connection and tested solutions to some of agriculture’s biggest problems. But it’s a slow-growing movement, and much of the industry is set up to work in opposition to the coalition’s goals, said Jonathan Coppess, an associate professor of agricultural policy at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. 

“When things are tight and margins are tough, what we’ve seen historically is farmers tend to push it, right? You push the land, you try to put more land in production,” he said.

Coppess said policy coming from the government should support innovation like regenerative agriculture so farmers don’t have to choose between protecting soil and water and making a profit. But he said policies act like a barrier instead.

“If you’re running tight — or even sometimes negative — margins on a crop, you’re going to try to get more of that crop so you can have a little bit more room to market it. And you’re going to try to do everything you can to put bushels in the bin.” 

He said that pressure makes it that much harder for farmers to move away from conventional practices and try conservation. 

“In theory, farmers could just decide to put less nitrogen on (their fields),” he said. “The risk of doing that is pretty significant. And so our policies may be making it worse … but we’re also not addressing those issues. And so to me, it’s almost like paradoxes within paradoxes wrapped in ironies.” 

He said conservation-minded farmers can be put at a competitive disadvantage to other farmers and across the supply chain.

“Farmers doing conservation practices are some of our most innovative,” he said. “They’re thinking well ahead. … Maybe it takes three or four or five years for this practice to really begin to pay off, and that’s a really critical but difficult investment.”

The farmer-led movement does have some federal backing. The coalition got seed money from an organization called the Fishers & Farmers Partnership, which uses Congress-appropriated money to support similar projects in the Midwest. They also support projects that actually install conservation practices. So far, they’ve funded 70 projects, and with matching funds from other sources to support these projects, they’ve generated more than $9 million for initiatives that put farmers at the center of the conversation. 

Amy Smith is one of the directors of the partnership. She said it is important to fund work that starts with the farmer. 

“We’re focusing on the farmer because we’re focusing on people,” she said. “We are sitting with that farmer at the table, and we’re pulling in other people that they can connect with, and then they’re doing the same on the back end. They’re connecting with neighbors; they’re connecting with local county members.”

The partnership has awarded grants for more than 15 years, and so far, they’ve helped to enhance 113 habitats and conserve almost 40,000 acres of land. Since 2021, their work has engaged more than 175,000 people in outreach or education events like the ones Jo Daviess County Soil and Water Health Coalition hosts. 

“Creating this mind shift in one farmer can lead to the mind shift of 20,” Smith said. “And that’s where we see watershed-scale change, landscape-scale change.”

Inviting people in 

As Thoren turned his truck onto the dirt road toward home, he said even though farming this way isn’t exactly easy, but when it’s stripped down to the basics, it’s pretty simple. 

“You’ve got to think about the farm. It’s not about the people. It’s about the farm. It’s about the land. It’s about the soil. That’s why I tell these young people, ‘Come in with me.’ I said, ‘It’s not about me. It’s not about you. It’s about the soil.’” 

That kind of understanding doesn’t come easy under the current industry that incentivizes conventional farming, he said. But when farmers’ minds start to shift, so can the whole system. 

“It just all comes together,” Thoren said. “It’s not the system. It’s the mindset of the person to get the system activated, but you got to have the mindset of the person first. That’s my true belief.”

He’s hosting a field day later this summer, and other farmers connected to the group are hosting their own field days, as well. It’s a testament to the success of the coalition; they get to be in a supporting role to farmers who are leading the way forward.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouriin 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.

How one program is working to bring Corn Belt farmers together for conservation agriculture 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.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

April 22, 1970, was no ordinary day in the bustling city of St. Louis. On this first Earth Day, streets filled with rallies, and lecture halls were packed with attendees. Most famously, rows of students marched through the streets wearing gas masks, protesting air pollution.

Around that time, John E. Franz was brewing up something dark in the depths of Monsanto’s St. Louis lab: glyphosate, an herbicide since linked to widespread environmental harm, cancer concerns and more than 100,000 lawsuits. 

While other countries have regulated or limited glyphosate production, the U.S. has largely ignored the problem. In February, President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14387 to promote the production of glyphosate and security for its producers.

The U.S. is increasingly dependent on glyphosate, and its overuse is becoming a serious concern. Amid the many environmental issues competing for attention, glyphosate deserves a prominent place this Earth Day, especially in Wisconsin.

Why Wisconsin? Glyphosate levels in groundwater aren’t being consistently monitored in the state’s highest-risk areas — its CAFO counties.

From fields to faucets 

Wisconsin farmers apply millions of pounds of glyphosate each year, primarily to fields growing soybeans and corn — the state’s two biggest crops. Those crops are used to feed animals at Wisconsin’s 293 concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. 

After animals eat glyphosate-treated crops, the chemical can reemerge in their manure. This is a problem, considering that mismanagement of CAFO waste frequently leads to groundwater contamination. 

Seems like something that should be setting off red flags, right?

Monitoring falls short in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) oversees groundwater and surface water testing for agrichemicals. The agency monitors pesticides and agricultural runoff through a private well sampling program, a field-edge monitoring program and random well sampling conducted every five to 10 years.

However effective these programs may appear, a closer look at where Wisconsin’s CAFOs are located compared with where monitoring occurs reveals a stark mismatch.

The three counties with the most CAFOs — Manitowoc (25), Brown (22), Kewaunee (19) — are all located in the Northeast Lakeshore region, where none of DATCP’s 22 field-edge monitoring wells are located, according to a 2023 report, the most recent available. The state’s monitoring system misses areas at highest risk for aquifer contamination.

Unfortunately it gets worse. DATCP’s Targeted Sampling Program also does not cover the entire Northeast Lakeshore Watershed, and these sampling panels do not test for glyphosate or its byproducts, the agency’s most recent program report shows.

The solution? Advocacy

Glyphosate usage has increased 15-fold since the 1990s. It will continue to go unchecked if more research and monitoring aren’t conducted to track where this chemical ends up.

What can citizens do? Write, speak and act.

1. Monitor the DNR’s hearing and meetings calendar for groundwater-related meetings you can attend.
   
2. If you’re a private landowner with a well, write to DATCP and volunteer to have your well sampled.
   
3. Universities such as University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and UW-Green Bay also play a role. DATCP already partners with both on research. Contact leaders of their water-related programs.

Why glyphosate still matters

To be sure, glyphosate is not the only problematic agrichemical. But it is by far the most widely used herbicide in U.S. agriculture, and its scale alone warrants closer monitoring of its spread in aquifers.

Still not convinced? Consider the many other contaminants that can leach into groundwater from CAFO manure — including other agrichemicals, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals and bacteria. Glyphosate is just one of many reasons stronger groundwater monitoring is needed in this region.

We’re not asking for much.

Glyphosate well testing is relatively inexpensive and should not strain government resources. Progress will depend on public pressure: Concerned citizens must keep pushing until stronger monitoring is in place across all at-risk areas of this beautiful state we call home.

Allison Gilmeister is a graduate student at Yale University studying religion and ecology. She grew up in Appleton. 

Opinion: In Wisconsin’s CAFO counties, glyphosate monitoring gaps threaten groundwater 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.

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Strong winds whipped around Doug Bartek, a fifth-generation farmer, as he headed into a grain bin to shovel soybeans onto a conveyor chute. The 60-year-old was anxious at the onset of the spring planting season, rattling off the long list of issues affecting his family’s livelihood at their 2,000-acre farm near Wahoo, Nebraska.

The high cost of fuel, equipment and fertilizer — compounded by the Iran war — and also tariffs, perceived “price gouging” by suppliers, and low soybean prices driven by a global supply glut. All of it weighs on Bartek, who is chairman of the Nebraska Soybean Association.

“Our biggest struggles are our inputs, be it fertilizer, seed, chemical, parts,” Bartek said. “There has been so much drastic markup in all of these. And I just kind of feel like the farmer’s kind of painted in the corner.”

Bartek’s concerns are shared by many Midwest soybean producers. Costs, such as equipment, have crept up over time while soybean prices have stayed low. Tariffs levied by the Trump administration last year and the resulting monthslong trade war with China only made things worse, they say. Then the Iran war bottled up shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, restricting global fertilizer supplies and sending fertilizer prices sky high. A ceasefire deal announced April 7 raised hope that bottlenecks in the strait would abate, but the future of the agreement was uncertain.

“A lot of producers are pretty nervous going into this year,” said Justin Sherlock, a soybean farmer and president of the North Dakota Soybean Growers Association. “It looks like we’re going to have another year of negative returns.”

Years of rising costs, low soybean prices

Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed, food and biofuels, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. That hasn’t always been the case. Before the 1960s soybeans weren’t a major crop in the U.S, according to Chad Hart, an agricultural economist at Iowa State University. It wasn’t until the 1990s that soybean production accelerated due to international demand — primarily from China — and soybeans and corn are now dominant in U.S. agriculture.

But U.S. soybean farmers, who typically also grow corn, have been facing financial issues for years even before the onset of the Iran war. Soybean prices have been persistently low in recent years. The global market has been awash in soybeans, driven in part by Brazil, which surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest soybean producer years ago.

“If we look at global soybean production over the past several years, it continues to set record after record, after record,” Hart said. “There’s been just large supplies globally, and that has led to depressed prices.”

Meanwhile, Midwest soybean farmers’ costs have risen. Overall farm production expenses, including seed and pesticide, have increased over time, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Operating costs for soybean production have stayed elevated since 2020 and are projected to increase again in 2026, according to the agency.

The cost of land also is a major issue for farmers, experts say. Midwest crop land values have increased. And most regional farmers rent some of their land, according to Joana Colussi, research assistant professor in the department of agricultural economics at Purdue University.

Bartek, who rents three-quarters of his land, said landowners are increasing rents, causing further financial strain.

“There’s a lot of what I call absentee landowners that have absolutely no idea what goes on on the farm,” he said. “All they know is their taxes went up and you get to make up the difference, some way, somehow.”

“They’re very concerned about negative margins driven by low prices and high cost,” said Paul Mitchell, a professor of agricultural and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, of farmers. “There’s just a liquidity cash crunch for a lot of them and they’re just trying to figure out how to deal with everything.”

The number of farms in the U.S. has shrunk over time, and consolidation in farming is a long-term trend, though farmers’ financial pressures wrought by high input costs and low commodity prices have contributed, Hart said. Larger farms tend to be more competitive and depend on large, expensive machinery.

“The financial reserves need(ed) on a farm are much greater than they used to be,” Hart said. “We’re a bit more sensitive to the financial conditions these days because so much capital is being utilized within the farm business.”

Tariffs, trade war have lasting impacts

Market forces aren’t the only issue weighing on farmers. Sweeping tariffs levied by President Donald Trump in April 2025 exacerbated a trade war with China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans. China responded with retaliatory tariffs and effectively boycotted U.S. soybeans, cutting off a major export market for Midwest farmers and driving the price of soybeans even lower.

“When that was announced and soybean prices basically collapsed, if you could afford to hold on to your beans and wait for better times, you were OK,” said Mike Cerny, a soybean and winter wheat corn farmer in Sharon, Wisconsin. “If you had a mortgage due or payments due or cash flow needs and you had to sell at that point, you were taking it pretty rough.”

The U.S. and China eventually reached a deal in late 2025. Beijing committed to buying 12 million metric tons of soybeans by January and at least 25 million metric tons annually for the next three years. China has since met its initial soybean purchase goal, and the Trump administration also rolled out a $12 billion temporary aid package in December to boost farmers affected by the trade war.

But the damage is already done, experts and farmers say. While China’s renewed purchases and the federal payments are helping, it’s not enough to recover farmers’ losses. Even after federal assistance, farmers still lost almost $75 per harvested acre of soybeans in the 2025 crop, according to the American Soybean Association. And the trade war further pushed China toward competing soybean exporters, such as Brazil — accelerating a trend of declining U.S. soybean exports to China.

“When China decided to stop purchasing, we couldn’t find enough other markets to replace those sales,” Hart said. “We’re still feeling the impacts today. When you look at where soybean exports are today versus where we would normally expect them to be, we’re still running anywhere from 15% to 20% behind normal.”

Joseph Glauber, former chief economist at the Department of Agriculture between 2008 and 2014, said global competitors to U.S. soybean farmers gained from the trade war.

“When China has put on tariffs against the U.S. they’ve tended to buy them from Brazil or Argentina, largely Brazil,” Glauber added. “We’re not nearly as dominant in the world as we used to be in terms of the global export market for soybeans.”

Iran war drove up fuel, fertilizer costs

After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, a severe slowdown in shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz sent the price of oil soaring. The shipping disruption also largely stopped the export of nitrogen fertilizers manufactured in the Persian Gulf and limited access to key fertilizer ingredients. The price of urea, the most widely traded nitrogen fertilizer, skyrocketed.

Soybeans don’t require nitrogen fertilizer, but it’s vital for corn, and most soybean farmers also grow corn. About half the global supply of urea comes from the Middle East, and Qatar and Saudi Arabia are two of the top sources of U.S. fertilizer imports, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

The U.S. and Iran last week agreed to a two-week ceasefire that included reopening the Strait of Hormuz, but traffic remained slowed amid disagreements over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, and the price of urea remains elevated.

Many Midwest farmers bought their fertilizer well in advance of the spring planting season. But some farmers who didn’t buy early face elevated prices. Dave Walton, a corn, soybean and hay farmer in Iowa and vice president of the American Soybean Association, said in March that some of his neighbors didn’t have cash on hand last fall to buy fertilizer and were struggling to budget for fertilizer due to high prices.

The war also caused gasoline and diesel prices to surge, causing further headaches for farmers. Oil prices dropped following the ceasefire announcement, but the war and the closure of the strait will have lasting impacts on farmers, said Seth Goldstein, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, an investment research company. Facilities in the Middle East that are critical for exporting chemicals, oil and other commodities were damaged or destroyed during the war, and it will take time for supply chains to recover, he said.

“Facilities have been hit, like liquid natural gas plants,” Goldstein added. “You are also looking at a big supply crunch in commodity chemicals, which are the inputs for crop chemicals.”

“We burn a lot of diesel fuel,” said Chris Gould, a corn and soybean farmer in Maple Park, Illinois. “It’s hard to say if I’m gonna come out ahead or behind on this whole deal. But I suspect I’m gonna come out behind.”

Concerns about the future

Farmers’ financial problems are showing up in some measures. Farm bankruptcies, while still relatively low, continued to climb in 2025, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. In a survey of 400 farmers conducted by researchers at the Purdue Center for Commercial Agriculture in late March, almost half said their farm operation is financially worse off than it was a year ago.

Goldstein, the Morningstar analyst, said farmers’ high costs and low revenues contributed to the spike in bankruptcies between 2024 and 2025. If costs rise faster than crop prices going forward, he added, that “would strain farmers again and likely lead to more bankruptcies.”

After 43 years of farming, Bartek said the smell of fresh dirt still gets him excited for spring planting. But he’s also heard of farmer suicides, bankruptcies and “retirement sales” where farmers are forced to auction off their operations due to financial problems. Bartek compares farmers to gamblers who put “millions of dollars in the dirt” hoping for returns.

At times, Bartek doubts his own decision to go into farming. He’s also worried about his son, who purchased a farm a few years ago.

Bartek wonders: “Did I do the right thing helping him get into farming?”

This story is a collaboration between Lee Enterprises and The Associated Press.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Already under financial pressure, Midwest soybean farmers are squeezed further by tariffs, Iran war 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.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Republican lawmakers have heard farmers’ concerns about President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. Their response? Short-term pain, long-term gain.

Farmers faced a shrunken export market and operating costs after Trump enforced steep tariffs on key trading partners and farm materials last year. In response, the Trump administration will begin disbursing a $12 billion bailout to farmers due to “unfair market disruptions” at the end of this month.

Republican lawmakers from Wisconsin, a major agricultural producer, acknowledge the 2025 to 2026 crop season challenges, which resulted in an estimated $34.6 billion in losses for the industry, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But they’re arguing that the success of specialty crops and rosier-than-expected economic indicators are evidence farmers can withstand any turmoil the tariffs have caused.

“Our farmers understand that we have to level the playing field. And how do you do that? You do that with these tariffs,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden said. “In order to get to the long term, you have to get through the short term, and that’s the reason that this money’s going back to people in the agriculture industry.”

A bipartisan group of agricultural experts said the Trump administration’s policies have “significantly damaged” the American farm economy in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee leadership this month, as first reported by The New York Times.

“It is clear that the current Administration’s actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” they wrote.

Wisconsin agriculture experts told NOTUS the administration’s bailout is undesirable and insufficient to cover many farmers’ lost revenue this year.

“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.

“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”

Republicans in the state, however, are standing behind the president’s agenda, pointing to the administration’s stated goal to boost the manufacturing industry through baseline tariff rates for all countries, reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“Wisconsin, at the end of the day, is going to benefit as we bring manufacturing back to the state,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely GOP nominee for governor.

He blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement for sending manufacturing companies packing for cheaper operations in China. Trump replaced NAFTA during his first term in office with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a deal Tiffany applauded.

Trump administration officials have defended tariffs in cable television appearances and in congressional hearings as key to transforming the American economy, even as some agricultural industries languish. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether instability in the agricultural markets is a result of Trump’s tariff policies.

“It has nothing to do with the tariffs,” Bessent said.

Still, there are some signs the administration could be responsive to the backlash. The Trump administration is planning to roll back tariffs on some steel and aluminum goods due to concerns the tariffs are hurting consumers, the Financial Times reported.

The soybean industry is one of the hardest hit by tariffs, which temporarily cost farmers the U.S.’ largest soybean trading partner, China. Although China fulfilled its initial purchase agreement last month and has agreed to purchase tens of millions more metric tons over the next few years, American soybean producers withstood an unprecedented five consecutive months without purchases by China.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Republicans are looking past the short-term pain of Trump’s tariffs 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.