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When the filing window for lawsuits seeking compensation for cancers and other illnesses linked to exposure to toxic aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) closed on Sept. 5, 2025, it did so with little notice to the firefighters it was meant to protect, including those in Wisconsin.

Fewer than 13,000 claims were filed nationwide, a small fraction of the more than 1 million firefighters in the United States. This gap has raised questions about awareness of the filing process and access to legal information among potentially affected individuals.

Firefighters in smaller and volunteer departments may have faced additional barriers to learning about filing deadlines. In many of these departments, limited administrative resources, part-time staffing and reduced access to legal outreach may have limited the reach of information about filing deadlines to some personnel.

This is a story about who did not file a lawsuit and why many firefighters may have been left behind while companies that profited from toxic products continue to avoid full accountability.

Toxic foam, local consequences

For decades, AFFF has been widely used by fire departments, industrial sites and military facilities because of its ability to rapidly suppress fuel-based fires. The foam’s effectiveness comes from per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of toxic chemicals known for their serious health risks.

Often called “forever chemicals,” PFAS persist in the environment and build up in the human body. Studies have linked PFAS exposure to kidney and testicular cancers, thyroid disease, immune dysfunction, and other long-term illnesses. Firefighters show higher PFAS levels in their blood than the general population from routine AFFF use and wearing PFAS-contaminated turnout gear meant to protect them.

PFAS contamination is widespread in Wisconsin. Elevated levels of these toxic chemicals have been found in the state’s drinking water, resulting from firefighting foam used at military installations and airports. While the contamination threatened the public through the water supply, it also exposed the risks firefighters faced from regularly using the foam.

A broken notification system

Wisconsin is home to 809 fire departments and roughly 25,000 firefighters. Nearly 80% of those departments rely on volunteer personnel. Many of those firefighters may have been exposed to AFFF during their service, yet the exact number of Wisconsin firefighters who filed claims before the Sept. 5 deadline is not available in consolidated public data. Nationwide, fewer than 13,000 claims were submitted in total, a figure that suggests vast numbers of potentially affected firefighters never filed at all.

Volunteer departments may have faced particular barriers. Many operate with limited administrative resources and part-time staffing, leaving little capacity to track litigation deadlines alongside the demands of active firefighting. Without dedicated staff tracking occupational health developments, information about the filing window may never have reached the people who needed it.

There was also no centralized system to notify retirees or firefighters who had already left service due to illness, the population arguably most in need of compensation. Without a mechanism to track AFFF claims at the local level, many firefighters likely had no way of knowing the window existed at all.

Removing barriers to ensure fair compensation

Firefighters who missed the filing window now face a much harder path to compensation.

Claims may still be filed, but only with causation reports directly linking their illness to PFAS exposure. These reports may cost thousands of dollars in expert fees to obtain, creating heavy burdens for firefighters already battling illness.

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla., introduced the Firefighter PFAS Injury Compensation Act in 2024, but it stalled in committee without a vote. 

Similar legislation should be reintroduced. Such a bill would establish a no‑fault compensation system that presumes PFAS‑related illnesses were caused by PFAS exposure during firefighting activities, allowing eligible firefighters to receive compensation without having to prove causation in the traditional legal sense. Compensation would be tied to the illness and length of service, with determinations required within 120 days of filing.

Beyond legislation, agencies must also mandate outreach programs and unified notification systems for future compensation programs. Such measures would ensure firefighters are not excluded from relief due to broken outreach systems.

For firefighters in Wisconsin and across the nation, these reforms could change lives.

Honoring their sacrifice means delivering on these reforms. We must go beyond symbolic gestures to concrete actions that truly support firefighters both during and after their service. The AFFF filing window revealed a systemic failure. What matters now is whether we choose to learn from it.

Jordan Cade is an attorney with the Environmental Litigation Group, P.C., based in Birmingham, Alabama, where he represents firefighters and their families affected by exposure to PFAS and other toxic chemicals.

Guest opinion: Many Wisconsin firefighters missed a chance at toxic foam compensation. Here’s how to fix that. 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.

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Silos — tower-like structures on farms that hold fermented feed for livestock — have dotted the Midwestern landscape for 150 years. But they’re threatened by development and old age. One “silo hunter” in northern Illinois has been tracking down silos her grandfather built before they disappear.

Marianne May drove around the backroads of McHenry County on a recent afternoon, scanning for those tall, round structures with a shallow point at the top that’s characteristic of her grandfather’s silos. Some of them have a little diamond shape on the very top — his signature.

She’s a self-proclaimed silo hunter, and she comes back to her hometown throughout the year to find ever more silos that her grandfather, Frank May, built on some of the oldest farms in the Midwest.

“I grew up in Richmond, and I always knew where a lot of my grandpa’s silos were,” she said. “I just sort of had them in my head. I never really thought that I would do anything about it. They just were always there, part of the landscape.”

Silos probably fade into the background for most people who live in the Corn Belt. Though they often serve as landmarks, people’s connection to them has tended to be utilitarian. Occasionally, silos have been saved by being converted into housing or public space, but many others have been destroyed.

But their legacy is rooted in Illinois. Historians believe the first one in the Midwest was built in Spring Grove, a village in McHenry County. Bill Kemp, historian with the McLean County Museum of History, said silos transformed agriculture in the Midwest. 

“Silos and all of these magnificent, very utilitarian buildings,” Kemp said, “really speak to this rich, dynamic, very diverse agriculture that was practiced up until World War II — or the decade after World War II — when industrialization and commercialization and singular, two-crop farming came into play.”

Farmers used to have to rely on dried hay to feed their animals over the winter, but it was bulky and it didn’t last long. But silos are airtight containers that farmers could pack tightly with corn, allow it to ferment and then store it for years. They used to be made of wood, but when people like Frank May started using concrete in the early 1900s, farmers could grow their livestock herds even larger.

Kemp said initially, farmers were skeptical of this new invention.

“Once you would have a farmer in a particular township or in a rural neighborhood construct a silo and find how useful it was,” he said, “that would be quickly adapted by his or her neighbors.”

It’s an essential structure.

“We tend to forget about the built environment of the Corn Belt,” he said. “And all these wonderful stories — the buildings and the structures in the countryside that people drive past all the time but never really think about — what do they say about the past?”

Marianne May said silo hunting can be a thankless task. She’s been doing this for six years and has identified almost 200 of her grandfather’s silos. She said there may be at least that many more.

“Almost every place I go, there’s something,” she said. “There’s some connection, whether it’s somebody in my family or extended family, or maybe they worked with Frank. There’s something fun to be discovered.”

So much of the work is investigation and guesswork. But she can speculate what it was like for her grandparents to grow up as neighbors, just like she wonders why the silos are clustered in groups, or why he used one shape over another.

She found a silo at Frank May’s childhood home, as well as a matching silo at the farmhouse across the street. That’s where Marianne’s grandmother grew up.

“I think it’s important that these silos are identified,” she said. “The locations where they are and where they were, because each time I come home, there are some gone that get pushed over for development or just fall over.”

It’s a reminder that May’s project is never-ending and that it’s a gift to learn more about the family history of the area’s farming community — and the mark farming made on the Midwestern landscape.

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.

Silos are disappearing from the landscape. One woman wants to hunt them down before they do. 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: 4 minutes

Scott Rosenberg and Heather Toman did not expect to own a vegetable farm in Wisconsin. Toman was born in New Mexico, and Rosenberg spent the first two decades of his career in the insurance industry. 

Now, as the owners of Full Circle Community Farm in Seymour, they’re considered some of the best organic farmers in the Midwest, and they’re helping expand a community dedicated to sustainable farming. 

Rosenberg quit his high-paying job to get an associate’s degree in sustainable farming at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. There he met Valerie Dantoin, who encouraged him to rent a quarter acre of her land to grow vegetables. 

“A midlife crisis is really what it kind of came down to, but instead of buying a sports car, I took a gigantic pay decrease,” Rosenberg joked. 

After getting her master’s degree in biology at Northern Michigan University, Toman met Rosenberg and established Full Circle Community Farm in 2017, along with Andrew Adamski. 

“It’s a continuous learning curve,” Toman said. “It never is really going to end – us learning and improving. We figure out new things every year.

Collaboration in action

The vegetable farm started on the family land of Rick Adamski and Dantoin, who own an organic pork and beef farm that Full Circle Community Farm partners with. Marbleseed named the group of five its Organic Farmers of the Year for 2024 for their sustainable practices.

Rosenberg and Toman now farm between 12 and 15 acres at peak season. Their Community Supported Agriculture program serves 250 people during the summer, delivering boxes of fresh produce to customers in Green Bay, De Pere and Appleton. 

“Another way to look at it is in 2017-2018, for our cold storage, we were utilizing a donated refrigerator, and now we have a 20-foot by 30-foot walk-in cooler,” Rosenberg said. “So things have slowly changed over the years.”

They help run the SLO Farmers Co-op, a group of seven independent family farms in northeast Wisconsin that cooperate to provide food to local schools and restaurants. All of the farms are committed to organic and sustainable practices.

“Corn, soy farmers, you know, at the end of the day, they’re farmers like I am, so I have respect for them and what they do, and they can farm how they want,” Rosenberg said. “It’s important to me that I’m recognizing the migratory birds that are coming through the area, and the deer that sometimes eat my vegetables, just having buffer zones by the creek of trees, and planting additional trees in there that are native to the area.” 

Rosenberg gave a public tour of the farm on Sunday, June 7, as part of the Summer Farm Crawl hosted by the Lake to Bay chapter of the Wisconsin Farmers Union. Rosenberg showed their greenhouses and some of his equipment, like an Allis-Chalmers Model G tractor that he modified to be an electric vehicle using a golf cart motor.

“Even though I’m not an engine guy, I figured if I just started taking bolts off the engine, it would eventually fall off, and it did … I can get about six hours of operation off that battery, which is more than I need in a single day,” Rosenberg said.

Building community

Full Circle Community Farm also provides a “worker share” option for its CSA, in which members work a shift each week in exchange for a large box of produce. These workers have grown into some of their most valued employees. 

“People just find us, and they have been a huge, huge blessing,” Rosenberg said. “We’ve had some worker shares that have been with us for four or five years now, and they just love their little four-hour slice of coming out here once a week and getting their hands dirty and doing something different.”

The farm also takes on interns through NWTC, training people of many experience levels. 

“We’ll bring people on with zero skills and patiently work with them,” Rosenberg said. “I just get a kick out of working with people and teaching them things, and just seeing the wonder on their faces that sometimes I don’t always feel, so I feel like that’s pretty unique.”

Amber Borealis started as a worker share about eight years ago. She moved onto the property during the COVID-19 pandemic and is now working full time as the farm’s pack shed manager. She’s impressed by how much they’ve been able to expand the farm over the years, including building the pack shed and three high tunnel greenhouses.

“When I started, they had one field,” Borealis said. “So just getting to see how much they can grow and how much community support they’ve had and how much they’ve supported the community in return has been really awesome.” 

Transitioning to farm life wasn’t always easy – Borealis was born in Virginia and trained as a glassblower in college — but Rosenberg and Toman were always game for her to try new things. 

“This past year I learned how to drive a tractor, which is not something I ever thought I’d do in my life … It’s terrifying the first time,” Borealis said. “It is a very large piece of equipment. It’s very loud. You feel very exposed, even if you’re in a cab, because it’s all glass. But it’s really fun, and this is the first year that the plants we’re harvesting are things I planted driving the tractor.” 

Borealis said she’s found an important sense of community living on the farm, especially since her family lives far away on the East and West coasts. 

“It’s nice having the little shelter and little group of friends who feel like family here,” Borealis said. “If I’m having a bad day, I can absolutely lean on Scott or Heather. And then if I’m having a really good day, they will absolutely support me and be like, ‘Yes, you did it!’” 

This story is part of Meet a Neighbor, an ongoing feature series focused on the people who make a difference in northeastern Wisconsin. Know someone we should spotlight? Nominate them here.

Seymour farmers build organic farming community in northeast Wisconsin 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

New federal dollars could extend the life of one of Wisconsin’s remaining coal power plants.

The Trump administration plans to spend $425 million to support operations at 13 coal plants in 10 states, arguing the move will help meet rising electricity demand and preserve thousands of jobs tied to the ailing coal industry. The White House will do so by invoking the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that gives the president broad authority to accelerate American industrial output at times of crisis.

Some of that funding could go to Madison-based utility Alliant Energy, which told Wisconsin Watch that it applied for a $19 million grant to extend the life of coal-powered units it owns at the Columbia Energy Center near Portage in central Wisconsin. The utility previously planned to retire the plant’s coal units before the end of the decade. 

President Donald Trump announced the action from the Oval Office Thursday, highlighting  that the coal plants set to benefit are all in states he won during the 2024 election.

 “Wisconsin put you over the edge,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., interjected, standing among the gaggle of Republican lawmakers and Cabinet officials behind the president. 

“Our action will allow these facilities to invest in upgrades that will extend their operational lives for decades into the future, reinforce the reliability of our electrical grid … and keep electricity prices low for the American people,” Trump said, adding that the move may also bolster the nation’s artificial intelligence boom.  

The administration will also distribute $200 million in Department of Energy grants to reopen a coal plant in Maryland and build the first new coal plants in the U.S. in over a decade: one in Alaska and another in West Virginia.

The Trump administration has already intervened to block the retirement of coal plants in Michigan, Indiana and elsewhere. But the White House did not pair those earlier orders with funding to support ongoing operations, so ratepayers across most of the Midwest — including in Wisconsin — will pick up the bill for those extensions.

Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and other Midwestern ratepayer advocacy groups have since filed an amicus brief in support of a lawsuit challenging federal orders blocking the closure of the Michigan and Indiana plants. The costs of extending aging coal plants’ operations “are adding to an affordability challenge customers are already experiencing in Wisconsin and nearby states,” said CUB Wisconsin Executive Director Tom Content.

Alliant has already pushed back the retirement dates for its coal-powered generators at the Columbia Energy Center and Edgewater Energy Center in Sheboygan. The company initially pledged to shut down the last coal generator at the Columbia plant by 2024; Alliant did not clarify the new expected life span of the plant. 

The Edgewater plant is slated to transition to natural gas generation by 2029.

Coal generation accounts for a declining share of Wisconsin’s and the Midwest’s overall energy mix. Natural gas surpassed coal as the state’s primary fuel for generating electricity in 2022.

Wisconsin ratepayers owe at least $1 billion to pay off debts tied to retired coal plants, including We Energies’ now-shuttered Pleasant Prairie Power Plant in Kenosha County.

Extending operations at Alliant’s remaining coal plants could reduce the amount ratepayers will still owe when those facilities eventually close. 

Wisconsin clean energy advocates reacted with alarm to the White House’s doubling down on coal generation. 

“Burning coal in Wisconsin releases a long list of toxic chemicals and heavy metals, both into the air and water,” said Clean Wisconsin spokesperson Amy Barrilleaux. “No one in Wisconsin is asking for more mercury, arsenic, lead or soot. But we will be getting all of it, especially as the Trump administration dismantles pollution safeguards at coal plants, insisting more power is needed for the ‘AI data center revolution.’”

“It’s also important to note that burning coal is one of the most expensive ways to produce energy in Wisconsin — far more expensive than wind and solar farms, which are the cheapest,” she added. “So Wisconsinites will have higher energy costs and will be paying for the health costs, the longer we burn coal in this state.”

Alliant has scaled up investments in renewable energy generation in recent years, buoyed in part by clean energy tax credits extended by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. The U.S. Department of Energy also agreed to back $3 billion in loans supporting Alliant’s wind generation and battery storage buildouts in the final days of the Biden administration.

The Trump administration has since largely reversed Biden-era tax incentives for renewable energy development. In its 2025 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Alliant noted that the termination of clean energy tax credits could “adversely impact” the company’s finances. 

The company did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the status of Department of Energy financing for its wind and battery storage projects.

U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum argued Thursday that clean energy tax incentives created a false impression of the viability of renewable energy sources. Wind energy developers, he said, “weren’t trying to generate electricity. They’re just trying to generate tax credits.”

“Energy shouldn’t need subsidy,” Trump responded.

Editor’s note: This story was updated on June 5, 2026 to include information from Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin

Wisconsin power plant could benefit from Trump’s $425 million coal push 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.

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The manufacturer of a firefighting foam that contaminated the water supply in northeastern Wisconsin with PFAS chemicals for decades agreed to a $10 million settlement with the state, the governor and attorney general announced on Thursday.

The settlement comes as residents, communities, regulators and environmental activists across the country are struggling with how to address contamination from PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.”

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers hailed the settlement with Tyco Fire Products as a “historic and important milestone” in the fight for clean water. The lawsuit filed in 2022 alleged that Tyco, a subsidiary of Johnson Controls, had contaminated the area around a firefighting training center since the 1960s and did not do enough to address it.

“Today’s a key step toward making sure polluters are held accountable, take responsibility for their actions, and ensure Wisconsinites don’t have to foot the bill for cleaning up the messes that others made,” Evers said in a statement announcing the deal.

But residents of the affected city of Marinette were hoping for more.

“The word of the day is underwhelming from our perspective,” said Doug Oitzinger, a former mayor of Marinette and current president of the advocacy group Save Our Water. “The dollar amount disappointed us. Ten million is kind of a drop in the bucket.”

Tyco ended outdoor training sessions with the foam containing PFAS chemicals in 2017. Also that year, the company first started providing bottled water and water purification systems to affected residents. The company says it has spent more than $100 million addressing the contamination.

Tyco said in a statement Thursday that it was pleased to have reached the deal, saying it “reflects the extensive work Tyco has undertaken” to address PFAS pollution.

“We’ve been part of the Marinette community for over 100 years and the spirit of doing what is best for our neighbors and the environment will continue to be our priority,” the company said.

PFAS are often referred to as forever chemicals because they resist breaking down, whether in well water or the environment. In the human body, they accumulate in the liver, kidneys and blood. Research has linked them to an increased risk of certain cancers and developmental delays in children.

The chemicals were developed as coatings to protect consumer goods from stains, water and corrosion. Nonstick cookware, carpets, outdoor gear and food packaging are among items that contain the chemicals. They also are an ingredient in firefighting foams.

Government estimates suggest that up to half of all U.S. households have some level of PFAS in their water — whether it comes from a private well or a tap. It is a widespread problem in Wisconsin and spawned numerous lawsuits.

Under the terms of the settlement announced Thursday, Wisconsin will put the $10 million from Tyco into a trust fund earmarked for PFAS cleanup. Tyco also agreed to continue to provide for replacement wells to provide clean drinking water to affected residents, conduct required monitoring and reporting, and implement further measures for the long-term remediation of the area.

The lawsuit, filed by Democratic Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, alleged that the company violated state law when it failed to notify regulators about a PFAS discharge and did not investigate or remediate the contamination around the Fire Technology Center in Marinette, a city of about 11,000 people that borders Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Tyco officials said at the time the lawsuit was filed that the company has invested “considerable resources” on investigating and remediating PFAS pollution from the Marinette firefighting training facility, including offering bottled water and in-home filtration systems to affected residents as well as building a groundwater pollution extraction system.

A second lawsuit filed by the state against Tyco and more than a dozen other companies over PFAS contamination in Wisconsin remains active.

The settlement announced Thursday will take effect if it’s approved by the judge overseeing the case.

Oitzinger, the former Marinette mayor, said Tyco was getting off too easy.

“Legally you may have gotten off of some hooks, but morally you’re not there,” he said. “You’re not there by a long shot.”

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.

Tyco agrees to $10 million settlement with Wisconsin over PFAS water contamination 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

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

Mississippi River conservation groups are among a broad coalition urging the federal government to take action against nitrate contamination in drinking water, which they say has reached “crisis levels” and is a public health emergency.

Nitrate, which forms when nitrogen-rich sources combine with oxygen, has long been found in the country’s surface waters and groundwater, where it can end up in people’s drinking water. Consuming water with elevated levels of nitrate is linked to birth defects, thyroid problems and some cancers.

Agricultural fertilizer and manure are the most common sources of nitrogen to groundwater, with septic systems and lawn fertilizers also contributing. An April analysis from the Environmental Working Group found that about 18% of the U.S. population from 2021 to 2023 used drinking water from community systems with 3 milligrams per liter (mg/L) or more of nitrate, the threshold at which the Environmental Protection Agency says indicates contamination.

Advocates say nitrate contamination has struggled to capture public attention but is costly and hazardous to those it affects. 

A May 5 letter to the Department of Health and Human Services and the EPA was signed by 80-plus groups, about a third of which are located in or focused on the Mississippi River basin. It calls on the agencies to “immediately identify and eliminate sources of nitrate pollution in drinking water and provide funds to communities to reduce nitrate to safe levels.”

The letter cites a recent report from the Iowa Environmental Council and the Harkin Institute at Drake University in Des Moines that found high nitrate levels in drinking water, as well as the presence of pesticides and forever chemicals, are linked to rising cancer rates in Iowa. Intensive farming across the state, including corn, soy and hogs, is the dominant source of nitrate pollution, the report notes.

“We understand these are long-term problems,” said Tyler Lobdell, senior attorney at Food & Water Watch, which spearheaded the letter. “The longer we wait to address root causes, the more difficult, and more expensive (it is), and the more harm is caused in the long run.”

The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment on the letter. A spokesperson for the EPA said it is beginning the next round of review of national drinking water regulations, last published in 2024.

Too much nitrogen taints drinking water, hurts river ecosystem

Nitrate contamination is a widespread problem across the country, especially in the Corn Belt, but actions to address it have been slow-going.

Groups in multiple states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, have previously petitioned the EPA to take emergency action on nitrate problems in specific regions. Lobdell said the agency has either ignored or given an insufficient response to those petitions, dating back several years and multiple presidential administrations.

Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA restarted an assessment — which had been suspended during the first Trump administration — of the impacts of nitrate on human health. Environmental advocates had hoped that it could lead to an adjustment of the national standard for nitrate in drinking water, which currently sits at 10 mg/L, because some research shows impacts to human health below that level. Little progress has been made on the assessment.

Beyond human health impacts, too much nitrogen in surface water can drive excessive algae growth, causing harm to fish and other aquatic life. It’s one culprit, in addition to phosphorus, in the creation of the Gulf of Mexico’s “dead zone,” an area of low oxygen that spans thousands of square miles from the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Kelly McGinnis, executive director of the environmental advocacy organization One Mississippi, a signatory on the letter, said that humans aren’t separate from the environment and that addressing nitrate contamination would have positive impacts on both.

She said she hopes the letter catches the attention of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has pledged to “Make America Healthy Again” and has shown interest in reducing toxins in people’s diets.

“We felt the urgency right now to take advantage of the new research (from Iowa) to say, ‘Hey, this is something you guys need to be addressing,'” McGinnis said.

The spokesperson for the EPA said the agency is “committed to Making America Healthy Again by taking real, tangible steps to evaluate risks of nitrates in drinking water while following the law and gold standard science.”

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.

Mississippi River groups tell feds to act on nitrate contamination 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: 5 minutes

Wisconsin regulators on Thursday approved a one-off contract between Alliant Energy and the Meta subsidiary building a data center campus in Beaver Dam, but with a major caveat: Alliant must return with a standardized plan to power future data centers — and shield other customers from resulting costs.

The agreement bears little resemblance to the model We Energies proposed for its hyperscale data center customers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. That model covers all future We Energies data center customers and was approved last month with major modifications by the three-member Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC).

Both the PSC and ratepayer advocates expressed reservations about allowing Alliant to proceed without a standardized payment structure for data center customers. Negotiating contracts one-by-one, Commission Chair Summer Strand argued, would undermine the public’s interest in transparency and consistency.

Strand and fellow commissioners Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins approved a modified version of the agreement, acknowledging that the Beaver Dam campus will open in 2027 with or without a tailored contract with Alliant. Sending the utility back to the drawing board for another year, they reasoned, could expose other customers to greater financial risk. The commissioners directed Alliant to propose a standardized payment structure for large data center customers similar to the We Energies arrangement approved last month.

Wisconsin Power and Light, an Alliant subsidiary, filed its case with the PSC last spring, months before Meta joined state and local officials in announcig its Beaver Dam data center campus.

The Beaver Dam facility, the first of its kind in Alliant’s Wisconsin service territory, is smaller than the soon-to-open Microsoft and Vantage data centers. Meta projects the facility will use 220 megawatts at peak, less than half the projected use of the Mount Pleasant and Port Washington campuses. But even that comparatively modest demand would be six to eight times the current peak for all of Beaver Dam.

In testimony to the PSC in November, Rebecca Valcq, Alliant’s assistant vice president for regulatory affairs and data center services, said the Beaver Dam campus would benefit other customers by “making more efficient use of existing infrastructure” and “spreading fixed costs” across a larger base. She also urged commissioners to consider the data center’s projected $2.1 million in annual local, state and federal tax revenue, among other economic benefits.

Alliant is a founding member of the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition, which promotes the state as a destination for data center developers.

Unlike We Energies, Alliant says it does not expect to immediately build new power plants to serve the Beaver Dam campus. Instead, Meta would purchase electricity from the same generators as the rest of Alliant’s customers. Hawkins noted on Thursday that even if the new data center doesn’t immediately require new generators, it might change the retirement timelines for Alliant’s existing power plants.

Contract negotiated in secret

The utility negotiated its contract with Meta behind closed doors. When it approached the PSC, it asked for approval without changes and requested extensive redactions, hiding many contract terms from the public. Alliant argued that the contract’s specific terms, and the surrounding secrecy, were needed to “attract and accommodate” Meta — and to compete with other states or utility territories courting data center development.

The redactions spurred pushback from ratepayer advocates and the PSC itself, which made more details of the contract available as the case progressed. In Thursday’s hearing, Strand drew parallels with the nondisclosure agreements some data center developers seek from local governments in Wisconsin, including Meta in Beaver Dam, which Wisconsin Watch first reported on in January.

“For some of these new private sector, big tech data center customers that are used to operating confidentially, coming into our state or coming into this process might be a shock to the system,” Strand said. “There is still this black-box approach that includes nondisclosure agreements, heavily redacted filings, corporate pseudonyms and negotiations shrouded in secrecy… This lack of transparency is hurting, not helping.”

The nonprofit law center Midwest Environmental Advocates in December sued the PSC to obtain unredacted documents from the Alliant case. That lawsuit is ongoing.

PSC adds protections, warns of gaps

Alliant proposed some protections for itself and non-data center customers. It set a floor for Alliant’s revenues from Meta, protecting the utility in a scenario in which the data center uses less electricity than initially anticipated.

That minimum covers the cost of building transmission lines to serve the data center. The American Transmission Company, the largest transmission operator in Wisconsin, is currently building a $200 million line to plug in the Beaver Dam campus.

Alliant also proposed requiring Meta to reimburse the utility for the costs of transmission infrastructure if the tech giant backs out of the Beaver Dam project before the new line is complete — and requiring Meta to put up collateral in case its credit rating falls.

The PSC agreed with those terms and added further protections, including requiring Alliant to regularly report on the costs of serving the Beaver Dam campus and leaving the door open for the commission to adjust the cost-sharing to shield other customers from unanticipated expenses.

Commissioners identified some ratepayer protections beyond what it has authority to require. The transmission buildout needed to serve data centers is largely outside of PSC jurisdiction. Much of that authority instead rests with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees transmission utilities nationwide, and the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), a nonprofit that manages much of the Midwest’s electrical grid.

MISO awarded the transmission line project that will serve the Beaver Dam data center to ATC, which spreads construction costs across all its Wisconsin customers, most of whom are outside Alliant’s territory. While Alliant’s new contract requires Meta to pay a minimum transmission fee to shield other Alliant customers from unexpected costs, those protections don’t extend to customers of other utilities using ATC’s transmission lines.

Alliant’s customers will also pick up “tens of millions of dollars” in transmission costs tied to data centers in other Wisconsin electrical utility territories, Hawkins said. “Whether or not that is appropriate — or something that we are being open-eyed about — is a concern of mine,” he added.

Commissioners on Thursday urged Alliant to begin discussions with ATC on a fairer method for distributing costs — one of the few options within commission authority.

The commission directed Alliant to produce a standardized plan before making agreements with new data center customers.

The PSC is aware that more data centers could come to Alliant’s turf.

“Evidence indicates there are 12 other potential data centers in this utility’s territory that are potentially in the works,” Nieto said. Given that future, she added, Alliant must “establish clear rates, terms and protections and provide transparency, regulatory clarity and public accountability as required when serving loads capable of reshaping a utility’s entire system.”

Ratepayer groups say PSC sent clear message

Ratepayer advocates welcomed Thursday’s decision while emphasizing the importance of the directive to outline a standardized payment structure for future data centers.

“While the PSC approved Alliant’s contract, with modifications, for Meta’s Beaver Dam data
center, the Commissioners recognized that continued one-off, bilateral contract
negotiations are not sufficiently protective of Wisconsin families and small businesses,” Brett Korte, a staff attorney with Clean Wisconsin, said in a press release.

“Today’s PSC decision requiring Alliant to develop a tariff for future data centers will result in a consistent, transparent framework that helps protect the public interest.”

Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content echoed commissioners’ hopes that Alliant and other electrical utilities will reach an agreement with ATC to protect non-data center customers from transmission-related cost shifts.

“We’re calling on ATC to protect customers across Wisconsin and Michigan to make sure people who aren’t even (customers of) these utilities aren’t on the hook,” he told Wisconsin Watch.

Alliant raised no immediate objections to the PSC’s changes.

“Protecting our customers while allowing communities to grow is central to our commitment at Alliant Energy, and that’s exactly what this contract is designed to do,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement on Thursday afternoon. “It maintains reliability, supports meaningful local economic benefits, and delivers benefits that help keep rates stable for all customers.”

In a quarterly earnings call last week, the company announced plans for a 370-megawatt electric service agreement with a data center customer in Iowa. Unlike Wisconsin’s PSC, Iowa’s utility regulator has been more open to one-off contracts between utilities and data centers.

By removing that option for Alliant’s future arrangements with data center customers, Content said, the PSC’s latest ruling could set a new standard for other utilities in the state.

“They’re sending a message,” he added. “None of this individual contract stuff.”

PSC approves Alliant-Meta data center power deal while criticizing ‘black box’ approach 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: 2 minutes

Beavers have been in the news these past few months in a variety of ways. The latest Pixar movie, “Hoppers,” features an animal lover who “seizes an opportunity to use a new technology to ‘hop’ her consciousness into a lifelike robotic beaver and communicate directly with animals.”

The filmmakers worked with a University of Minnesota ecohydrologist, Dr. Emily Fairfax, as a science expert, even naming a key character for her (Dr. Sam — for Samantha Emily Fairfax), per Minnesota Public Radio. She visited the studio several times and led a research trip to Colorado to help the team learn more about beavers and their habitat.

In that MPR story, Fairfax said Pixar did a good job showing how beavers can improve ecosystems with their dams.

“When you lose that beaver, you also lose the homes for the other animals, and I think that’s a message that not everybody really understands,” she told MPR. “If you trap a beaver out, if you remove its dam, you will take away a lot more than just the beaver from that ecosystem, whether you meant to or not.”

She also spoke to the question of beavers as a nuisance or pest, a topic I’ve been reporting on for a few years now and interviewed her about for a recent story.

Researchers have identified Wisconsin as being among the top 10 states for biodiversity loss, largely due to climate change and animal overexploitation. But a vocal minority serving on a beaver advisory committee that is drafting recommendations for the state’s Department of Natural Resources believes it’s time for a change: Beavers should cease to be framed as a nuisance species and instead as an ecosystem engineer that creates wetlands. That can help reduce some of the worst effects of climate change: droughts, floods and fire.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services program lethally removes beavers in Wisconsin and other states throughout the Midwest. In Wisconsin, wildlife services staff trapped about 2,200 beavers in 2025 and removed more than 800 dams.

The majority of beaver committee members — mostly composed of state and federal employees and interest groups — support the status quo. Those who do not have criticized the committee as stacking the deck against people who would advocate for substantive changes in policy. This makes, they say, the outcome a seemingly foregone conclusion. Some committee members have said a survey released to gauge the public’s tolerance of the critters frames beavers as pests and fails to mention the effectiveness of coexistence methods.

As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, the state has an arduous and often expensive permitting process to install flow control devices that can lower water levels in beaver ponds or prevent the blockage of culverts. That can usher landowners toward lethal solutions, the use of which Wisconsin law liberally allows.

People may hunt or trap beavers and remove their dams on their property without obtaining a license or reporting their catch. In fact, there are risks to ignoring one’s beavers.

People who own or lease beaver-occupied land and don’t allow their neighbors to remove them are liable for damages. Additionally, if a beaver dam causes damage to a neighboring property, the injured party may enter the property where the dam lies and remove it without being charged with trespassing.

Committee members petitioned to have Fairfax address the group. She stressed beavers’ role as a “keystone” species, on whom many plants and animals depend.

“It is harder to coexist,” she said. “But in many cases, it is worth it.”

Pest or nuisance? The role of beavers in ‘Hoppers’ and the real world 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.