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.
President Donald Trump's frequent use of tariffs over the last year has created plenty of economic uncertainty affecting Wisconsin farmers. But producers in the state say it's not clear what the end of the tariff policy will mean for them in the coming months.
Bankruptcy filings were 46 percent higher than in 2024, according to an American Farm Bureau Federation report, with more than a third of filings in the Midwest.
Last week, the EPA reapproved dicamba for use on soybean and cotton crops after it was banned in 2024. The herbicide is the subject of thousands of complaints and lawsuits around the country, but Wisconsin has proven to be an outlier.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Growth Energy, the nation’s largest biofuel trade association, today called on lawmakers to act swiftly on E15 following another disappointing farm income forecast from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“Rural America is hurting,” said Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy. “Corn growers were already expecting a net loss of $180 per acre, and this latest USDA report confirms that the broader farm income isn’t faring much better. Our growers don’t want to depend on federal aid for their livelihood — they want strong, stable markets for their crops. That’s exactly what E15 delivers — an immediate source of demand for up to 2.4 billion additional bushels of corn — at no cost to taxpayers. Best of all, it means lower fuel prices for American drivers. Congress simply can’t afford to wait any longer to deliver a permanent fix for E15.”
Democratic lawmakers gathered at the Capitol Monday to announce their latest attempt to legalize recreational cannabis in Wisconsin. “Across the country, the cannabis debate is over,” Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee) said during a morning press conference, adding that “40 states and Washington D.C. have legalized cannabis in some form.” That group includes Wisconsin’s neighbors Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota. Yet Wisconsin continues a complete cannabis prohibition.
This is not a reality Wisconsinites have chosen for themselves; two-thirds of Wisconsin voters who responded to a Marquette Poll in 2025 said that they wanted to see the cannabis plant legalized. “The will of the people is clear on this issue,” said Madison. “And today, we’re acting on it.”
Democrats in the state Legislature are aiming to fully legalize cannabis for responsible adult use, including a medicinal cannabis program. “Legalizing cannabis in Wisconsin is an economic necessity, a public safety strategy and a racial justice imperative,” said Madison. Using the state’s hemp industry as an example, Madison said that entrepreneurs built out a cannabis supply chain with hemp as its bedrock after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. As a result, Wisconsinites began buying hemp-derived products including smokeable flower, beverages, vapes and edibles.
“That industry now supports 3,500 jobs, and contributes $700 million to Wisconsin’s economy,” said Madison. All of that is at risk of completely vanishing after the federal government changed course by imposing THC limits on hemp products growers and distributors say are biologically impossible to achieve. Currently several bills with differing visions of how to regulate hemp in Wisconsin are circulating among Wisconsin lawmakers, with a deadline set by the federal government for businesses to either adapt or shut down coming up in November.
Madison stressed that full legalization would both protect a thriving industry and generate revenue. “Wisconsin would raise nearly $300 million annually once the market is fully up and running,” Madison said, citing an analysis by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. “That’s hundreds of millions of dollars we are currently leaving on the table or worse, exporting to other states, while pretending that prohibition still works. We all know that it doesn’t. And nowhere is that failure clearer than in our criminal legal system.” Madison said, adding that in 2018, four out of every 10 drug arrests nationally were for cannabis.
While Black and white Americans use cannabis at similar rates, Black people were more than five times as likely to be arrested for cannabis than white people in 2022, Madison said. He pointed to Ozaukee County, where Black residents were 34.9 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis, and Manitowoc County where Black residents were 29.9 times more likely to face cannabis-related arrests. Madison said that both counties rank in the top five nationally for racial disparities in cannabis arrests.
“Let’s be honest,” said Madison. “That is not about public safety,” he said. “That is about policy choices that criminalize Blackness, criminalize poverty, and criminalize entire communities. The idea that we can incarcerate our way to safe communities is a lie. And cannabis has been one of the most effective tools for enforcing that lie.” Madison called on Wisconsin to replace a failed punishment model with evidence-based regulations that would help enrich communities instead of harming them for generations.
Mike Sickler, co-owner of TerraSol Brands, echoed the call for legalization. “We did not invent the demand, but we are here to respond to it,” said Sickler. The federal hemp ban shook the hemp industry, he said, spreading fear and confusion. “What is frustrating is that the solution is right here in front of us,” said Sickler. “We already have the infrastructure, we already have the best practices in place, we already have the workforce, we already have the market. What does not exist is a clear state law that allows us to continue operating responsibly.”
Phillip Scott, a hemp farmer and advocate for the industry, said that the federal hemp ban and the lack of a legalized cannabis industry in Wisconsin has removed certainty and stability for family farms and small business owners who saw a light at the end of the tunnel after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill. “These are not speculative businesses,” said Scott. “These are working farms, these are family farms, and they follow the law. But today, that certainty is gone.” Scott said that cannabis legalization is about jobs, rural economies, and “giving farmers clarity instead of chaos.”
Scott said that farmers are not asking for special treatment, but rather a fair and stable transition for those who followed the law. “We are asking for reasonable access to a legal market, and we are asking for a system that doesn’t shut family farms out before they even get a chance.”
“Legalization is about freedom,” said Rep. Andrew Hysell (D-Sun Prairie). “Wisconsin is an outlier in terms of denying people this freedom.” Hysell noted a 1974 decision from the Alaska Supreme Court that found that the state’s privacy rights included an individual’s right to use cannabis. “And here we are over half a century later, and no one has the freedom to buy marijuana in Wisconsin. Standing in the way of the people’s freedom is not good politics, almost 70% of Wisconsinites want full adult use legalization, and even more want medical.”
Wisconsin hunters will have a better chance to harvest black bears this fall due to a record number of licenses and higher quota approved Wednesday by the state’s Natural Resources Board.
A September poll from First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group, found that 4 out of 5 rural Americans “say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a ‘state of crisis’ or ‘a major problem.’” (Photo by Sue Barr/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Several U.S. Senate Democrats launched an investigation into how the Trump administration’s child care funding cuts and policy changes are affecting rural families, in a Sunday letter provided exclusively to States Newsroom.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Raphael Warnock of Georgia led four of their colleagues in urging the respective heads of Rural Development at the Department of Agriculture and the Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services to offer up more information on their “current capacity to support child care, particularly in rural communities.”
Joining Warren and Warnock are Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Alex Padilla of California and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
“Despite child care being one of the biggest costs American families face, the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the federal programs that aim to make child care more accessible and affordable, including ACF and USDA’s Rural Development Office,” the senators wrote to acting Under Secretary for Rural Development Todd Lindsey and ACF’s Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.
USDA Rural Development and ACF work to expand access to child care in rural areas.
The senators pointed to a September poll from First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group, which found that 4 out of 5 rural Americans “say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a ‘state of crisis’ or ‘a major problem.’”
The group said the administration’s slashing of staff at agencies and programs that support affordable child care, including ACF and Rural Development at USDA, are raising concerns that the administration is “failing families across the country and adding to the affordability crisis facing working-class families.”
Cuts from federal child care fund to Dem states
The senators raised alarm over some of the administration’s most sweeping actions regarding child care programs, including attempts to cut off nearly $2.4 billion from the multibillion-dollar Child Care and Development Fund, or CCDF, to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York earlier in January.
All are led by Democratic governors and the administration cited concerns about allegations of fraud.
CCDF — administered within the Office of Child Care under ACF — provides federal funding to states, territories and tribes to help low-income families obtain child care.
The five Democratic-led states sued in a New York federal court over the freeze, which also included $7.35 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and $869 million from the Social Services Block Grant — totaling more than $10 billion when combined with CCDF.
“States are challenging the legality of this freeze, but the consequences would be devastating should the courts permit the administration to permanently withhold the funds,” the senators wrote.
Days prior to the announced freeze, the administration said states had to provide “justification” that federal child care funds they receive are spent on “legitimate” providers to get those dollars.
That demand followed allegations of fraud in Minnesota child care programs, which had prompted HHS to freeze all child care payments to the state.
The administration also announced earlier in January it would be rescinding multiple Biden administration child care rules that “required states to pay providers before verifying any attendance and before care was delivered.”
Head Start in rural America
The Democrats argued that President Donald Trump has also “attacked Head Start at every turn since his inauguration.”
ACF administers Head Start, which provides early childhood education, nutritious meals, health screenings and other support services to low-income families.
The senators noted that “Head Start is especially crucial in rural communities, where it is often the only licensed child care program available.”
During the record-long government shutdown in 2025, scores of Head Start centers experienced lapses in funding grants as a result.
Even prior to the shutdown, Head Start already experienced chaos during the Trump administration, such as reports of delays in accessing approved grant funding, regional office closures and firings at ACF’s Office of Head Start.
Flood of workers departing USDA
Meanwhile, USDA saw more than 20,000 employees leave in the first half of 2025, according to a report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General. More than one-third of the agency’s Rural Development unit left during that time.
“Instead of strengthening the programs that aim to address the rural child care crisis, President Trump is firing the people who administer them,” the senators wrote.
On top of that, the agency in March confirmed it would be slashing around $1 billion in previously announced funding for programs to help child care facilities, schools and food banks purchase from local farmers.
USDA also faced backlash during the shutdown for refusing to tap into a multibillion-dollar contingency fund in order to keep benefits flowing for the country’s main food assistance program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The senators urged Lindsey and Adams to respond to their inquiries by Feb. 16.
USDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to a request for comment, ACF said Monday it is “currently reviewing the U.S. Senators’ letter and will respond to them directly.”
Kory Adams is not even a year out from high school. But he’s now the owner of his own cattle ranch and pursuing his dream of a life on the farm in northern Wisconsin.
Wisconsin DNR Secretary Karen Hyun testifies to an Assembly committee about legislation to address PFAS contamination. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A Wisconsin Assembly committee held a hearing Wednesday on a pair of bills to help mitigate and clean up water contamination caused by PFAS — a class of compounds also known as “forever chemicals” that has been tied to cancer and developmental diseases in children.
For two and a half years, $125 million set aside in the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget to fund the cleanup of PFAS contamination has sat untouched as the Republican-controlled Legislature, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and a collection of interest groups were unable to reach agreement on how to structure the program and who should be held responsible for the pollution.
After initial optimism, the first legislative effort died after Democrats and environmental groups complained that the proposal let polluters off the hook.
While the debate in Madison has dragged on, communities including French Island near La Crosse, the town of Stella near Rhinelander, Wausau and Marinette have continued to face the harms of PFAS-contaminated water.
When the legislation was introduced again at the beginning of this legislative session, legislators again expressed hope that a compromise could be reached. Earlier this week, the bill’s authors, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), released a proposed amendment to the legislation. One of the bills directs how the money in the trust fund will be directed and the other creates the programs through which the money will flow.
At the hearing Wednesday, the duo emphasized how important it was for them to get the money out the door into affected communities and the need for compromise on the issue.
“The 2023-2025 budget included $125 million to address PFAS contamination and support cleanup efforts across the state,” Mursau said. “Unfortunately, those funds are sitting idle because we have failed to pass the legislation necessary to put them to work. Progress will require compromise. There are stakeholders on both sides of the aisle who may not like these amendments, but that is the reality of divided government, and it is not an excuse for inaction.”
The pair said the latest version of the legislation is the result of months of negotiations with the Department of Natural Resources and the Evers administration.
While the legislation still includes the “innocent landowner” provisions that have been at the heart of the dispute, the amended version tightens the definition of who qualifies. Wimberger said the new definition would still allow the DNR to bring enforcement actions against industries including paper companies and airports, but that the current version represents a lot of movement from the DNR and Evers.
“There was quite a bit of coming off the ledge on the governor’s side regarding innocent landowners,” Wimberger said.
Additionally, the bill creates a number of programs to test for PFAS and fund mitigation efforts by helping individual landowners dig new wells, helping communities upgrade water treatment systems and funding more comprehensive testing efforts.
But the language of the proposed amendments shows how difficult it has been for legislators to adjust the dial on Wisconsin’s PFAS policy. The bills now have the support of Evers, the DNR and some of the state’s leading environmental organizations, but industry groups including the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and the Wisconsin Paper Council argued at the hearing that the bill would single out certain types of industry for enforcement actions.
“Substitute Amendment One takes a huge step backwards in terms of protecting truly innocent landowners and passive receivers,” Adam Jordahl, WMC’s director of environmental and energy policy, said, referring to a particular provision of the bill.
WMC in recent years brought and lost a lawsuit that would have prevented the state’s spills law from being applied to entities responsible for PFAS pollution.
Several industry representatives also threatened that if the amended bills are signed into law, they could invite legal challenges because of “constitutional concerns.” Jordahl said that one of the bills treats municipal facilities such as landfills and water treatment plants differently than private businesses conducting similar activities, which could make the law vulnerable to a lawsuit.
“This discrimination raises a significant constitutional concern under the concept of equal protection,” he said. “A successful lawsuit raising an equal protection claim could result in the invalidation of those unfairly applied exemptions. Second, as a policy matter, we feel this simply makes no sense. What is the policy justification for treating commercial and industrial or manufacturing facilities differently when they’re conducting the same activities and operating under the same laws and regulations?”
Paper industry representatives said at the hearing it’s unfair for the bill to single them out because the industry will be subjected to increased scrutiny despite their claims that the business does not cause most PFAS pollution.
Last year, the DNR named a paper mill as the responsible party for the PFAS contamination in Stella, which has seen some of the highest concentrations of the chemicals in the state.
Despite the skepticism from the business community about the latest version of the legislation, lawmakers throughout the Capitol appeared confident that it could finally get across the finish line.
“I met with Republican lawmakers and the DNR last week about critical PFAS bill changes that will be necessary to garner my support, and I’m really optimistic we’re finally going to be able to get something good done here after months of successful and productive negotiations,” Evers said in a statement. “I’m grateful Republican lawmakers have formally introduced an amendment that reflects the changes we’ve agreed to so far as a sign of good faith. We still have some important details to iron out to make sure DNR has the resources they need, but we’ve made a lot of progress. So, I’m really hopeful.”
Both Evers and Wimberger noted that the only remaining sticking point in the negotiations is how many staff members the DNR will be authorized to hire to support the responsibilities required under the bill. The current version of the amendment authorizes 10 positions while Evers is requesting 13.
Republican leaders in the Legislature have also signaled that the bill is likely to move forward.
“I think it’s a move in the right direction,” Senate Majority Leader Devin Lemahieu (R-Oostburg) said. “I think it’s a bill that hopefully our caucus can get behind and maybe finally get that money out the door.”
A bill to regulate Wisconsin's cottage food industry has drawn opposition from home bakers. (Photo courtesy of Becca Barth)
A Wisconsin Senate committee held a public hearing Tuesday on legislation that would create a regulatory system for the cottage food industry in Wisconsin.
In the hearing of the Committee on Transportation and Local Government, representatives of restaurants, commercial bakeries and grocery stores supported the proposal arguing that the bill would treat all food sellers equally, while the home bakers who would be affected by the bill complained that it would institute harsh income restrictions while subjecting them to requirements that aren’t relevant to the specifics of selling food out of a home kitchen.
Authored by Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), the bill has largely Republican support but Milwaukee-area Democratic Reps. Russell Goodwin and Sylvia Ortiz-Velez have signed on as co-sponsors.
Under the bill, cottage food producers would be required to register with the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. As part of that registration, people would need to provide a list of all the foods they sell and an ingredient list for each item. Any producer that earns between $10,000 and $40,000 in revenue from their home business would be subject to inspections by DATCP.
Anyone who makes more than $40,000 in revenue would no longer be considered a cottage food producer and would be required to obtain work space in a commercial kitchen.
The cottage food industry in Wisconsin was allowed to grow after a 2017 lawsuit struck down a state law banning the sale of home baked goods. Since then, the state has operated with just the court precedent guiding the industry.
Throughout the hearing, commercial industry representatives pushed for the passage of the bill as it’s written. Lobbying records show that the Wisconsin Bakers Association, Wisconsin Restaurants Association and Wisconsin Grocers Association have supported the bill.
“You have created these rules for me, and I get to be surprise inspected and tested on them to ensure consumer food safety,” Chrissy Meisner, owner of a bakery in Bloomer and member of the Wisconsin Bakers Association, said. “It is clear, even in my small town, that your honor system of them following the rules doesn’t work. There seems to be a need for the same oversight you require of me to sell bread and cookies applied to everyone.”
While much of the testimony in favor of the bill focused on food safety issues, some of those in favor also said they were concerned about competition from home producers.
“There’s only so much food that can be sold into a community,” Susan Quam, executive vice president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, said. “And everyone needs to fight for their share of those sales, whether it’s the grocery store, the local bakery, the restaurant or the cottage food baker. However, the first three are regulated, licensed, and have a lot of different and additional requirements that are put upon them to get that same very low profit margin.”
Home producers at the hearing said they would welcome regulation to tame their industry’s current wild west landscape, just not the regulations under the bill as currently written. The Wisconsin Farmers Union and the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty have both lobbied against the bill.
The 2017 lawsuit that helped the industry bloom was litigated by the Institute for Justice, a national non-profit law firm focused on civil liberties. Ellen Hamlett, the organization’s activism manager, said she believes there’s “been a lot of industry pressure” to draft the current version of the bill.
“Wisconsin’s cottage food laws are overdue for reform,” Hamlett said. “It is very important to note that the way that this bill is structured will jeopardize the living of many cottage food producers.”
Jobea Murray, president of the Wisconsin Cottage Food Association, said that the bill represents a huge administrative burden for both the home producers and for DATCP, which will not receive any additional funding for implementing the registration and inspection requirements under the bill. She also said the food safety certifications required under the bill are specific to restaurant-like settings, which won’t help make home produced products safer.
“So we want to work with you to get this right,” Murray said. “[The bill] is a great starting point, but it needs significant changes to truly support Wisconsin’s cottage food economy.”
A lot of the opposition to the bill was centered around the $40,000 revenue cap. Several speakers noted that most states that allow the sale of cottage foods have no cap or else set their caps much higher. Iowa and Illinois do not set a cap on their cottage food sales while Minnesota’s revenue cap is $78,000.
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Skilled immigrant workers like Ricardo Manriquez and dairy herdsman Alex are integral to Wisconsin’s foundries and farms but face growing uncertainty under shifting federal immigration rules.
Manriquez, on a temporary TN visa, helps design complex metal castings in Manitowoc but has a tenuous path to permanent residency as visa policies and fees change.
On a dairy near Madison, Alex, who lacks legal status, struggles to recruit and retain workers as immigration enforcement tightens and labor pipelines dry up.
Wisconsin employers in manufacturing and agriculture say the changing immigration landscape is shrinking labor pools, complicating hiring and long-term workforce planning.
Ricardo Manriquez starts his shift at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry headquarters in Manitowoc long before the sun rises. More than 100 miles away, on a dairy farm near Madison, a herdsman named Alex is heading out to the barn with his crew to milk a few hundred cows.
Both are middle-aged fathers with neat haircuts and sensible work boots. Both studied at technical schools and have years of hands-on experience in their fields. Both are immigrants from Latin America who settled in Wisconsin over the past two decades. The Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement and overhaul visa rules leave both men and their employers in difficult positions.
The recruitment pathway that brought Manriquez, an engineer from Mexico with a temporary work visa, to Wisconsin remains mostly untouched by the Trump administration’s overhaul of federal immigration policy, but his prospects of securing permanent residency in the foreseeable future have faded. Alex, an undocumented immigrant from Nicaragua, is in a more precarious position. His small team is poised to shrink, and finding new hires is more difficult than ever.
At least one in 20 Wisconsin workers is a noncitizen, and many Wisconsin employers have watched recent federal immigration policy changes sever, clog or redirect their hiring pipelines. Those employers — in manufacturing, dairy and innumerable other segments of Wisconsin’s economy — are finding their bearings in the new policy landscape, and more shake-ups or reversals may lie ahead.
Ricardo Manriquez, Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry project manager, is shown at the company’s main plant in Manitowoc, Wis., Dec. 5, 2025. (Paul Kiefer / Wisconsin Watch)
The Tijuana engineer pipeline
Manriquez’s office sits near a door to the Manitowoc plant’s labyrinthine production floor, where the motion alarms on forklifts periodically cut through the hum of heavy machinery and a Nirvana album blasting from a worker’s portable speaker.
“All my life I was involved with grease and cars and steel,” Manriquez said. His father was a mechanic, he said, and his hometown, Tijuana, is a manufacturing powerhouse. Relatively low labor costs have drawn hundreds of manufacturers to cities near Mexico’s northern border, which now serve as a hub for the North American electronics, automotive parts, aerospace and medical device industries.
With an electro-mechanical engineering degree from a local technical university in hand, Manriquez found work at Prime Wheel, an American automotive parts company with a corporate office and fabrication facilities in one of Tijuana’s factory districts. He spent nearly a decade there, working long shifts with tedious commutes while attempting to raise a family. “In Mexico, we work 48 to 60 or even 80 hours a week without extra pay,” he said. “You get paid $50 to $60 a day … If you have a family, it really doesn’t help. You need to do a side job.”
Though his supervisor promoted him from designer to project engineer, Manriquez saw few opportunities to climb higher at Prime Wheel’s Tijuana plant. Prime Wheel did not respond to a request for comment.
An employee works at his desk at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The TN visa program was Manriquez’s ticket to cross the border. A product of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the TN visa provides a three-year work authorization to Mexican and Canadian nationals with job offers for a limited number of high-skilled professions.
Compared with other types of employment-based visas, like the H-1B favored in the tech and health care industries, the TN visa offers a straighter path to the U.S. for skilled Mexican workers. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved nearly 16,000 TN visas for Mexican nationals in 2024, compared to just under 2,000 H-1B visas for Mexican nationals. Only 42 Canadians received TN visas that year.
Manriquez learned about an opening in Manitowoc through word of mouth, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry was already primed to use the TN visa program to recruit skilled engineers.
When Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry purchased a metal castings manufacturer in New Hampton, Iowa, in 2024, the company absorbed the plant’s team, including four TN visa holders. It has retained those workers and hired three more since the acquisition, including Manriquez, who joined the company last February. Most came from Tijuana’s metals industry.
The company is trying to build a domestic pipeline. It has a relationship with Wisconsin’s technical college system, which trains engineers for a range of manufacturing roles, including on quality control teams like Manriquez’s. “It’s really hard to say if (those) skill needs are growing or shrinking,” said Ian Cameron, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing, noting that day-to-day responsibilities and compensation for engineers with similar titles vary between companies.
But attracting and retaining talent for plants in small Midwestern towns is a constant challenge, said Michelle Szymik, the company’s human resources director. New Hampton, population 3,500, sits in a quiet stretch of northeast Iowa, and skilled engineers with U.S. citizenship tend to favor less-isolated workplaces.
Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry’s product line compounds its recruiting challenges. The foundry produces intricately detailed castings for Dodge sports cars and SpaceX satellites, among other clients, and few students of U.S. technical colleges have mastered the skills needed to design those castings by graduation. “It takes a long time to come up to speed on that kind of stuff,” Szymik added. “So we do internships, but at the end of the day, it’s really nice when you can find somebody who’s already got the skill set.”
An employee walks through the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Mexico’s advanced manufacturing industry provides a straightforward solution. Engineers like Manriquez come with years of experience and, Szymik said, are more willing to settle in small towns to “take care of their family and build a career.” Manriquez can earn more in two hours than he did in a day in Tijuana, and he no longer spends hours of his day trapped in gridlock.
The visa comes with trade-offs. Manriquez’s wife and children remain in Mexico, and while they are eligible to join him in Manitowoc as dependents, his wife would not receive work authorization.
The TN visa is not a path to permanent residency, and Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry would eventually need to sponsor Manriquez for another employment-based visa before helping him secure a green card and a long-term career with the company.
One of the more common paths would involve securing Manriquez an H-1B visa, which would allow him to simultaneously hold a “nonimmigrant” visa and apply for a green card. But the company would first need to prove it can’t find an equally qualified U.S. citizen for the job. If it finds a qualified candidate, Manriquez would be out of a job and on his way back to Tijuana.
The company spent nearly $12,000 to transition another employee from a TN to an H-1B visa, most of which went to legal fees. The Trump administration raised that hurdle even higher last year, introducing a $100,000 fee for new H-1B visa applications — a price tag few employers can afford, including Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry.
Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector could bear the brunt of the new H-1B fees. Of the more than 1,600 workers employed in Wisconsin who received H-1B visas or renewed their visas last year, roughly a quarter worked in manufacturing. No other sector in the state sponsored more H-1B visas in 2025.
Manriquez can still renew his TN visa, but the breakneck pace of the Trump administration’s policy changes gives him reason to wonder whether that will remain true. “Suddenly, one day to another, (things) probably can change,” he said.
Completed aluminum disks lie in a pile at the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, Sept. 4, 2024, in Manitowoc, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Wanted: ‘a good future for our children’
On a chilly morning in early December, Alex wore only a long-sleeve thermal shirt and a vest as he checked on the herd.
“We deal with the cold and the heat. We’re out there in all of that,” Alex told Wisconsin Watch in Spanish. “And it doesn’t matter to us because what we want is to work. What we want is to build a good future for our children.”
Alex is at ease around the animals. He studied agricultural sciences at a technical high school, and he was partway through a veterinary degree at a university in Managua 15 years ago when he headed north from Nicaragua to the U.S. He feared that the country’s security apparatus would some day come for him — a vocal opponent of authoritarian President Daniel Ortega.
He eventually approached an attorney about obtaining legal status, only to learn he had missed the eligibility window, which ended a year after his arrival. Because he lacks legal status, Wisconsin Watch has agreed to use only his first name.
“After 15 years in this country that respects your rights as a person, as a worker,” he said, going back to Nicaragua feels unthinkable. His brother, who spent four years working in Wisconsin, recently returned to care for his son, reporting back that allegiance to the ruling party is now required to access government services.
Alex has worked in dairies and manufacturing since arriving in Wisconsin, settling down at his current workplace in south-central Wisconsin to join his partner, with whom he has U.S.-born children. To minimize their risk of crossing paths with immigration enforcement, Alex’s family has cut back on all but the most basic errands. “We no longer think, ‘Oh, it’s a summer weekend. Let’s go to the mall. Let’s take the kids to an amusement park,’” he said. “We’ve reduced it to the minimum: if we need to go to a clinic or a hospital for a medical appointment, to school, to buy food.”
Alongside his daily duties leading a crew of fellow immigrant workers — all from Nicaragua — Alex serves as the farm’s recruiter. He’s held the role for the past five years, giving him a front-row view of the federal immigration crackdown’s impact on hiring.
“It’s been eight months since the last person came (to ask for work),” he said. “Before, people came here constantly.”
A worker is shown cleaning the milking barn at a farm in Wisconsin on June 11, 2024. (Ben Brewer for Wisconsin Watch)
With two members of his small crew preparing to leave the U.S., Alex now relies on his extensive network of former colleagues and acquaintances across Wisconsin to drum up replacement candidates. He’s competing with manufacturers who can offer overtime, but the farm’s isolation is now a selling point.
“Right now, security is a consideration. A farm is more separate, less involved, fewer moving people and cars,” he said. “The working conditions will be a little harder, but there’s more security.”
The farm’s owner, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid drawing the attention of immigration enforcement officials, added that skilled dairy workers can now be more selective when searching for new jobs. “The (labor) pool is clearly getting smaller,” he said. “If you don’t have a number of things — a nice, comfortable, attractive facility, one that people want to work in, if you don’t have a good company culture, and if you can’t provide housing, you’ll have a hard time hiring and retaining people.”
Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Van Ruden expects the labor drought to inflate farm wages. “You’re going to have to pay more to keep help,” he said, “which means paying someone $25 an hour versus $15.” Not all farms will be able to afford the new labor market, he added.
Alex’s employer says he has looked into the H-2A program, which provides temporary visas for hundreds of thousands of seasonal farmworkers each year, as a backup if his current crew shrinks. At least 16% of the agricultural employers that hired through the H-2A program last year own dairy herds, up from just 6% in 2020, but most sought agricultural equipment operators in seasonal job listings submitted to the U.S. Department of Labor. But the H-2A program does not provide visas for year-round roles like milking cows — a core responsibility of Alex and his crew. With that source of labor off the table, the farm’s recruitment options are slim.
While some farmers are exploring reducing labor needs through automation and rotary milking parlors, akin to a lazy Susan for cows, those options don’t eliminate the need for workers entirely.
While automation may reduce the need for some types of labor on dairy farms, some workers may simply shift to other tasks, said Hernando Duarte, a farm labor management outreach specialist with UW-Madison.
“Maybe you can need less people in the parlor,” he said, “but who is going to feed the calves? All the calves have to be fed two or three times a day. I’ve also seen more people moving more into tractors and feed work.” Rotary milking parlors, he added, also require trained staff to operate and clean.
Many workers who will learn to operate the automated milking equipment, Duarte added, will likely come from the same labor pool that currently keeps many Wisconsin dairies afloat: immigrants. But Wisconsin’s technical colleges are also preparing dairy science students for the industry’s technological frontier. Greg Cisewski, dean of Northcentral Technical College’s School of Agricultural Sciences, Utilities and Transportation, said several graduates have gone on to manage automated milking operations.
Meanwhile, Alex is preparing for the worst. He and his partner have arranged to temporarily transfer custody of their children to a U.S. citizen if they are arrested or deported, and he has been sending money back to Nicaragua for years to build a backup nest egg.
When Alex came to the U.S., he left behind a 1-year-old son. He has kept in touch, and his now-teenage son recently shared his plans to study veterinary medicine. “The degree I couldn’t finish is the degree he’s going to study,” he said.
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Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden's farm. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
At the Wisconsin Farmers Union annual farm and rural lobby day on Wednesday morning, the organization’s members heard about how antitrust policy, environmental regulation enforcement and immigration law are affecting the state’s farmers.
About 90 farmers union members sat around tables in a conference room at the Madison Public Library before heading to the Capitol to push their legislators on the group’s 2026 priorities.
Gov. Tony Evers addressed the group in a kick-off address, discussing what his administration has accomplished and what it plans to do moving forward as the “chaos and confusion” of the federal government under the Trump administration “continues to make an already strenuous job harder.”
“Regardless of what happens in Washington, here in America’s Dairyland, we’re going to keep fighting for Wisconsin farmers and producers and their families because Wisconsin’s agricultural industry isn’t just core to our economy, it’s core to our culture, core to our heritage and who we are as a state,” Evers said.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul addressed the group next to discuss how the Department of Justice is working to help the state’s farmers, noting the DOJ was involved in the lawsuit to keep federal food benefits available during the government shutdown last year.
He also discussed the DOJ’s work to protect fair markets and evenly enforce the state’s environmental rules to make sure that the state’s largest corporate farms are playing by the same rules as its smallest family operations.
“One area that we are engaged in is ensuring that the market is fair, that there’s competition, and ensuring that there’s a level playing field for everybody to compete on. To me, that is fundamental to a lot of what we do,” he said. “So one way is regarding consumer protection. Another area where we take that very seriously is protecting our environmental laws and ensuring that the environmental laws in the state are evenhandedly enforced, because, as you all know firsthand, if massive corporate farms are able to cut corners, that puts them at a major competitive advantage, and all the farms that are out there doing the right thing, very carefully complying with rules and regulations that are in place. If the rules aren’t evenly enforced, that puts the small farmers, often small businesses, at a major competitive disadvantage.”
Immigration crackdown
Among the farmers union’s top legislative priorities this year is protecting immigrant farm workers.
On immigration, the organization said it is lobbying legislators to oppose a bill that would require all Wisconsin sheriffs to join the federal government’s 287(g) program, which grants sheriff’s deputies some authority to enforce federal immigration law. Under the bill, if counties refused to participate, the state would reduce the amount of shared revenue provided to the county by the state by 15%.
Across the state, 18 sheriff’s offices have entered 287(g) agreements, including Kenosha County, which signed its contract to hold immigrants in its jail on behalf of ICE last week.
The organization also wants to support a bill that would allow DACA recipients — people whose parents brought them to the country without documentation when they were children — to obtain occupational credentials such as licenses to practice medicine.
In a panel on immigration policy, Amanda Martinez, a policy analyst at Kids Forward, said 287(g) can cause fear to spread throughout rural immigrant communities.
“This could really deeply impact rural communities who already have those smaller budgets, and also impact the immigrant workers within local communities, because they are a big part of the workforce, whether it’s at farms [or] food productions,” Martinez said. “Bills like 287(g) and Assembly Bill 24 really creates that fear in communities, because immigrants don’t want to go to work, take their kids to schools, and can’t really participate in everyday life, and essentially will impact the workforce as a whole.”
Kaul was asked to respond to the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and criticized the ICE activity that led to the shooting death of Minneapolis resident Renee Nicole Good, and the exclusion of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from the investigation of that incident.
The Farmers Union is also opposing a bill that would regulate cottage foods makers in a way that advocates said would effectively kill the industry — which was only launched after a lawsuit in 2017 changed existing state law. The bill under consideration this year would require the business owner to use a commercial kitchen if their annual revenue exceeds $40,000.
Advocates said this limit makes it impossible for these businesses to survive because $40,000 per year isn’t enough to support a family and the cost of renting commercial kitchen space, in communities where that’s even available, would make it harder to turn a profit.
“If you do revenue of $40,000 your take home or profit is not going to be that, and it is not a living wage, and there is no amount of business you can do and put in an energy that is going to make this a sustainable business, even as a value-add product for farmers,” Jobea Murray, a Milwaukee home baker and president of the Wisconsin Cottage Food Association, said. “The amount of effort and time you put into this. There is no ROI on this. So you can can all day, you can bake all night. You are going to hit that revenue cap and you’re going to make not a lot of money.”
President Donald Trump displays a signed bill in the Oval Office on Jan. 14, 2026. Trump signed the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which restores whole milk to school lunches across the country. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a law Wednesday that will restore whole milk in federally subsidized school lunches.
The dairy staple — out of school meal programs for more than a decade amid a broader push to curb childhood obesity — will soon return to school cafeterias under the law.
Trump said during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office that the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act will “ensure that millions of school-aged children have access to high-quality milk as we make America healthy again.”
Seated with a jug of milk on the Resolute Desk, Trump said the changes will also be “major victories for the American dairy farmers who we love and who voted for me in great numbers.”
White House ceremony
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins celebrated the legislation becoming law and said her department would post Wednesday the “new rulemaking that is necessary to get whole milk back into school lunches.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also lauded Trump’s efforts and described the measure as a “long overdue correction of the school nutrition policy that puts children’s health first.”
Trump was also joined by Dr. Ben Carson, national advisor for nutrition, health, and housing at USDA, along with Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, GOP Sens. John Boozman of Arkansas, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Roger Marshall of Kansas, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and advocates who supported the bill.
Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, and Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan, chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, also attended the ceremony.
The U.S. House passed the bill in December, following unanimous passage in the Senate in November.
Welch and Marshall, along with Pennsylvania Sens. Dave McCormick, a Republican, and John Fetterman, a Democrat, introduced the measure in the Senate.
Thompson and Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier of Washington state brought corresponding legislation in the House.
What the new law does
Under the law, schools that are part of the USDA’s National School Lunch Program can offer “flavored and unflavored organic or nonorganic whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free fluid milk and lactose-free fluid milk.”
The program — which provides free or low-cost lunches in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions — saw nearly 29.4 million children participate on a typical day during the 2023-2024 school year, according to the Food Research & Action Center.
The schools can also provide “nondairy beverages that are nutritionally equivalent to fluid milk and meet the nutritional standards established by” the Agriculture secretary.
The law exempts milk fat from being considered saturated fat as it applies to schools’ “allowable average saturated fat content of a meal.”
Parents and guardians, as well as physicians, can also offer a written statement for their student to receive a nondairy milk substitute.
Michael Dykes, president and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association, celebrated the bill becoming law in a Wednesday statement.
Dykes dubbed the law a “win for our children, parents, and school nutrition leaders, giving schools the flexibility to offer the flavored and unflavored milk options, across all healthy fat levels, that meet students’ needs and preferences.”
The signing marked the second major nutrition policy change this month. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which encourages more full-fat dairy and protein.
A hemp plant at a Cottage Grove farm. Hemp, used for industrial purposes and now grown legally in Wisconsin, is made from a variety of the cannabis plant that is low in THC, the active ingredient that is responsible for the intoxicating effect of marijuana. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Wisconsin lawmakers are backing competing visions for the future of hemp in the state. One proposal, (SB 682), was discussed during a Thursday meeting of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Revenue. The bill would create a regulatory structure for hemp-derived cannabis products which would preserve the state’s hemp industry despite a federal ban set to take effect in November. Without state-level intervention, or the federal government choosing to reverse course, hemp growers and distributors fear that Wisconsin’s $700 million industry and about 3,500 jobs will disappear.
Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), chair of the Agriculture and Revenue Committee presented the bipartisan hemp bill to his committee, which he authored with bipartisan support. Testin’s legislation would define hemp as cannabis plants with no more than 0.3% of delta-9 THC (or the maximum concentration allowable under federal law up to 1%, whichever is greater) and define “hemp-derived cannabinoids” as any such compound extracted from the hemp plant. THC concentrations would be determined using specific high-performance testing methods.
Wisconsinites would need to be at least 21 years old to purchase hemp-derived cannabinoid products under the bill, which mandates that products undergo independent lab testing to ensure that they contain the amount and type of cannabinoids described on the product’s label. This practice, known as truth-in labeling, is something the hemp industry has called for in recent years.
Products could not be sold under the bill without labeling including contact information for the manufacturer or brand owner, serving sizes per container of product, ingredient lists including allergens, potency labeled in milligrams, and any necessary warnings. Under the bill, hemp-derived products could not contain more than 10 milligrams of THC in a single serving.
Testin said Thursday that globally, the industrial hemp market was valued at roughly $11 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach $48 billion by 2032. “Despite its wide availability, the regulation of [hemp-derived cannabinoid] products is essentially non-existent, leaving a patchwork of different approaches taken by states across the country,” he said.
In Wisconsin, such products “are generally recognized as legal but unregulated,” Testin said. “There are no state laws that restrict the sale to minors, regulate the potency or content of [hemp-derived cannabinoid products], or establish labeling or packaging requirements.” Minnesota, Kentucky, Tennessee and other states have moved to enact their own regulations, Testin said. “Regulations are needed to eliminate the current uncertainty regarding the status of [hemp-derived cannabinoid products], provide stability and certainty for businesses looking to enter this segment of the economy, and enact public safety regulations.”
Both Testin and Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) have worked on hemp laws for Wisconsin since the federal Farm Bill passed in 2018. “I’ve actually grown hemp,” said Kurtz, recalling that in 2019 “it was kind of a wide open market.” People that Kurtz and others called “bad actors” throughout the hearing also rode the hemp wave, seeing it as a “get rich quick scheme.” Kurtz said that today, the hemp industry is filled with people who want to do the right thing, but that “bad actors” have persisted.
Kurtz said SB 682 is designed to ensure that Wisconsinites “get the very best product, and they know what they’re getting.” He stressed that “if we do nothing, then hemp is going to be illegal at the federal level…but it will still be legal here in the state of Wisconsin. So I think it would behoove us to work together, get a good compromise, a good common sense piece of legislation to make sure that we — in my humble opinion — protect our constituents, but also protect an industry that I think is needed.”
Although hemp would be illegal at the federal level, a state-level industry could still operate similarly to the way some states have fully legal recreational or legalized cannabis programs, largely because the federal government has not cracked down on those industries.
Testin added that “regardless of anyone’s thoughts as it relates to cannabis and cannabinoids, it’s here. And obviously we have a lot of different approaches as to how to best move forward.” He repeatedly took aim at the “stupidity” of what he described as “our overlords” in Washington D.C., but also criticized other hemp-related bills being pushed in Wisconsin. Whereas some Republicans are seeking to ban hemp products outright, others have differing ideas about how a legal industry should be regulated.
A bill introduced by Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), SB 681, would require that manufacturers and distributors of hemp-derived cannabinoid products have permits. Products would be sold under a three-tier system, and would be regulated similarly to alcohol under the Division of Alcohol Beverages, a component of the Department of Revenue, which would be renamed to the Division of Intoxicating Products.
Although both Testin and Wimberger’s bills have gained bipartisan support, Testin described Wimberger’s bill as “the dead bill” and “deader than dead.” Testin argued that SB 681 would over-regulate the hemp industry, and even lead to a monopolization effect where a small number of entities could control who gets hemp permits, shape an otherwise competitive market, and operate in a “good ol’ boys club” manner.
Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) highlighted the divide among state Republicans over hemp and cannabis products, stressing that Democrats are not the ones holding up legalization and regulation.
The committee room was filled with people from across the hemp industry who listened to the conversation. When lawmakers questioned how to ensure that children do not acquire intoxicating hemp products, distributors and manufacturers pointed to age-verification software even for online sales, which require a photograph and image of a driver’s license to approve an order. There was also discussion about how to prevent products from being marketed to children using cartoon-like advertising and appealing candy wrappers.
Some veterans testified, describing how hemp helped them alleviate pain, kick addictive pain killers, soothed PTSD symptoms, and calmed the body for sleep. Other testimony centered on the danger involved in crossing state lines to Michigan or Illinois to acquire cannabis to treat various medical conditions. Hemp farmers stressed that they need to know now how they will be affected by a looming federal ban as they decide when or whether to plant their crops in the spring.
Much of the public testimony was supportive of Testin’s bill, though some speakers said that it needed to be amended to protect farmers and growers, and also expand the kinds of products it would cover including drinks and gummies.
“Yes, we are now in a scenario where there are intoxicating hemp products,” said Testin. “But just no different than anything like beer, wine, or alcohol, we need to have some sensible regulations put in place, which this bill aims to do just that.”
As for “concerns about getting baked or getting high from these products,” Testin added, “it’s no different than those individuals who go out and consume too many old fashioneds at fish fry on a Friday night, or have too many beers. It’s about personal choice and responsibility, but at the same time making sure that we have some regulations put in place.”
The hemp industry deserves to “thrive and grow,” Testin said, while the public deserves protection and to know “that this stuff isn’t falling into the hands of people it shouldn’t be in, like kids.”
The return of the sandhill crane to Wisconsin is a conservation success, but now the state needs to manage the population and the crop damage the birds can cause. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
A Wisconsin Assembly committee held a public hearing Tuesday on a bill that would require the state to hold an annual hunt of sandhill cranes.
The sandhill crane was once nearly extinct and its recovery is seen as a conservation success story. Similar to the return of the wolf, the growth of the sandhill crane population has caused a long running political debate in Wisconsin. For years, Republicans in the Legislature have been pushing for a sandhill crane hunt — arguing the opening of recreational opportunities would benefit the state’s hunting industry and advocating for eating the birds’ meat.
The proposal this session stems from a legislative study committee commissioned last summer which examined how to mitigate damage caused by the birds to the state’s farm fields and the possibility of holding a hunt. Estimates say that each year the birds cause almost $2 million in crop damage, mostly to corn seeds that are eaten before they can sprout.
In the initial version of the bill proposed by the study committee, a number of provisions were included that would have directly addressed the crop damage. If a sandhill crane hunt is authorized, that would allow farmers to access money through an existing Department of Natural Resources damage abatement program, but otherwise all the farm-specific provisions have been removed from the version of the bill now being considered by the Assembly.
If a bird is frequently damaging a farmer’s crops, a depredation permit is obtainable from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, however federal law requires that the bird’s carcass not be consumed.
Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), the bill’s author, said the bill is a “well thought out proposal to relieve farmers and promote new opportunities for hunters.”
But Democrats on the committee and critics of the bill questioned why the specific farmer assistance programs were cut out, how a hunt would affect the crane population and how much establishing a hunt would cost the DNR.
Rep. Vincent Miresse (D-Stevens Point) noted that the Republicans were simultaneously arguing that holding a hunt wouldn’t significantly impact the state’s crane population and that holding a hunt would help mitigate the crop damage caused by the birds.
“If it’s not going to impact the population very much, then how do we protect farmers’ investment in seed and corn sprouts and potatoes and cranberries, if we’re not going to actually impact the population to the benefit of the farmer,” Miresse said.
Taylor Finger, the DNR’s game bird specialist, said in his testimony that opening the existing crop damage abatement program up to sandhill crane damage without adding additional funds to the program would result in “worse outcomes for farmers seeking assistance.”
Republicans on the committee largely questioned the testimony of sandhill crane researchers. Anne Lacy, director of eastern flyway programs at the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, said she is concerned about holding a hunt in Wisconsin because it is one of the few places on the continent where sandhill cranes breed.
“I don’t think there is a [population] number that justifies a hunt,” Lacy said. “There are many states that hunt sandhill cranes, and they do it successfully. They’ve been managed for years, including this population. But Wisconsin is a breeding state, so that puts a different spin on a hunting season … So it’s not so much a number. It is how a hunt affects this bird because of its ecology.”
In an extended back and forth in which he raised his voice, Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) pushed Lacy to say she is supportive of sandhill crane hunts elsewhere.
“All right, so I catch you dodging me, so therefore you do not personally support a hunt in any other state,” Sortwell said.
From the docks of the Port of Santos, a 58-terminal complex covering an area the size of 1,500 American football fields, ships loaded with soybeans prepare to set sail for China.
Less than 45 miles from São Paulo, the port services nearly a quarter of Brazil’s soybean exports. For decades, U.S. agribusiness giants like Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill have operated facilities at the port.
Today, they share space with COFCO International, China’s state-owned food conglomerate, which has invested around $285 million in recent years. The expansion will make it the port’s largest dry bulk terminal.
And Santos isn’t alone. In the west, the Port of Chancay is rising on Peru’s central coast.
COSCO Shipping, a state-owned Chinese company, is investing at least $3.5 billion to construct 15 berths, logistics facilities and a 1.1-mile tunnel, enabling cargo to be channeled directly from the port to nearby highways.
Once fully operational, Chancay will function as a regional redistribution hub for exports from Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia: from copper and lithium to soybeans and other agricultural products. Upon completion around 2035, it is expected to become the region’s third-largest port.
These and other recent investments across the region have positioned China to source more agricultural products from Latin America as it pivots away from U.S. farmers in response to President Trump’s higher tariffs.
China first began that pivot in 2018, when Trump’s first-term tariff hikes ignited a global trade war. But since returning to office, the president has renewed that strategy, and China’s investments signal a generational shift that may not reverse if and when the trade war subsides.
“What are the signs that China’s here to stay (in Latin America)? Really, the infrastructure,” said Henry Ziemer, an associate fellow with the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. nonprofit policy research organization that reports 23 ports across Latin America have some degree of Chinese investment.
“Ports, railways, roads, bridges, metro lines, energy, power plants are probably the best signs that China has a long-term commitment … These are long-term projects.”
The Port of Santos alternates with Paranaguá as Brazil’s leading soy export hub, handling about 25% of the country’s shipments. (Santos Port Authority)
Daniel Munch, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, said that when a country gains control over ports that make trade faster, cheaper and more reliable, such as the Port of Chancay, trade flows tend to “lock in.” Reversing that trend, he warned, would require the United States to narrow its efficiency gap, noting that none of its container ports rank among the world’s top 50.
“It could entrench patterns,” Munch said.
This is bad news for American farmers, particularly soybean growers.
Soybeans are a cornerstone of American agriculture, particularly in the Midwest. Nationwide, more than 270,000 farms grow the crop, according to the latest Census of Agriculture. In Illinois, nearly half of all farms depend on soybean production, and in Iowa and Minnesota, about four in 10 do.
In 2024, more than 40% of U.S. soybean production was exported, with about half going to China.
But tensions between the United States and China have risen this year – Trump has increased tariffs and recently threatened a 157% tax on all Chinese imports, while China responded by reducing U.S. soybean imports to near zero for six months.
A trade deal announced in November ends the suspension and includes commitments for China to buy 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in the final two months of 2025 and at least 25 million metric tons annually through 2028, according to Purdue University and farmdoc Daily.
Brazil has stepped in as China’s biggest supplier of soybeans, which are used to feed livestock to support protein demand.
China has become one of the two main export markets for at least 10 nations, most of them in South America, according to the International Trade Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2023 report by the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
From 2010 to 2022, the region accounted for nearly one-third of China’s food imports. Brazil alone supplied about 21% of those imports over the same period.
“In recent years, there has been significant growth in telecommunications projects and across all areas of transportation – including airports, ports, roads, railways, and subways – as well as in sanitation and urban mobility. These sectors account for nearly 60% of the total number of projects,” said José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs, executive secretary of ECLAC, who highlighted the scale of China’s involvement during the 2024 International Seminar on Contemporary China Studies in Costa Rica.
China has viewed Brazil as a strategic partner for several years, primarily because of its soybean supply, and has responded with infrastructure investments, according to Fernando Bastiani, a researcher with ESALQ-LOG, the Group of Research and Extension in Agroindustrial Logistics at the University of São Paulo.
“Today, COFCO has direct access to farmers, purchases soybeans and oversees the entire commercialization chain, including storage and transport to China,” Bastiani said. “In recent years, (COFCO) has also realized it needs to control logistics systems and infrastructure, because that’s a key part.”
In Brazil, Bastiani explained, logistics costs account for 20% to 25% of the final soybean price, mainly due to the long distances between farms and ports and the high cost of trucking. “China understood that by investing in infrastructure, it could help make Brazil more competitive,” he said.
In May, the two countries signed new agreements to deepen their agricultural trade ties, granting Brazil authorization to export meat and ethanol byproducts.
“Amid the changing and turbulent international landscape, China and Brazil should remain committed to the original aspiration of contributing to human progress and global development,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping.
China’s pullback squeezes US port volumes
While Latin America has seen growth, many U.S. ports have experienced a significant decline in business.
At the New Orleans District — a dominant grain corridor — soybean exports grew by less than 3% between September 2024 and September 2025, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics at the U.S. Department of Transportation. Shipments through the Los Angeles District fell almost 15%, while the steepest drop came in the Seattle District, where exports plunged 81%.
Nearly half of all U.S. corn, soybean and wheat exports move through the Mississippi River system, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Market Intel report.
This major inland trade artery connects the Midwest’s farming regions to the Gulf of Mexico, carrying an average of 65 million metric tons annually of bulk agricultural products by barge over the past five years to export terminals near New Orleans, where shipments depart for international markets.
“The facilities that purchase soybeans from farmers extend to our freight railroads, where they don’t have as much volume that they’ve been moving, at least for soybeans,” said Mike Steenhoek, executive director of the Soy Transportation Coalition.
Steenhoek noted that corn exports have remained strong, which has helped sustain some port activity — but it hasn’t solved the underlying problem: “China imports more U.S. soybeans than all of our other international customers combined,” he said.
At the Port of Los Angeles, the largest container port in the Western Hemisphere, agricultural exports have also weakened as trade with China cools.
“Exports in general have been very soft, and we attributed it to the retaliatory tariffs that have been put in place by China,” said Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. “Our single biggest export sector is agriculture … of that, soybeans are the number one export commodity.”
Before the first tariffs were introduced in 2018, China accounted for about 60% of the port’s business. Today, it’s closer to 40% and falling, as trade flows and sourcing shift toward countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand.
“We’ve been very aggressive in finding cargo out of other countries,” Seroka said. “But there is no doubt in my mind that we are concerned every day that these policies could impact the amount of cargo that comes to Los Angeles.”
The decrease in exports is not just a hit to farmers, but also to port workers; each four containers handled at the port generates one job, according to Seroka.
“In Southern California, one in nine people has a job related to this port,” said Seroka, referring to dockworkers, truck drivers, brokers and warehouse employees. “It truly is a conversation of national significance.”
U.S. port traffic isn’t poised for a quick rebound despite a recent trade agreement that ends China’s suspension of U.S. soybean imports. After six months of near-zero shipments due to retaliatory trade measures, Beijing in November agreed to purchase 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans in the final two months of 2025 and to commit to annual purchases of at least 25 million tons through 2028.
A recent analysis from Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture and farmdoc Daily said the announcement offered some relief to U.S. farmers at the tail end of harvest, but overall exports to China this year are still on track to be the weakest since 2018, when trade tensions during the first Trump administration slashed volumes to 8 million tons.
“It is very difficult to take a market (China) of over a billion people and replace that,” said John Bartman, a soybean farmer from Marengo, Illinois.
By October, Brazil had exported a record 79 million metric tons of soybeans to China, nearly 80% of its total soybean shipments during the period, according to a farmdoc Daily analysis of data from Brazil’s Foreign Trade Secretariat. Brazil’s total soybean exports reached about 100 million tons between January and October, already surpassing the country’s full-year total for 2024, which was just under 99 million tons.
“U.S. soybean farmers are standing at a trade and financial precipice,” Caleb Ragland, president of the American Soybean Association, wrote in a statement.
US trade strategy remains unsettled as China moves ahead
While China builds long-term infrastructure to secure its supply chains, Washington is still struggling to define its trade strategy and to contain the political fallout of renewed tariffs.
In mid-September, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives moved to block Congress from influencing Trump’s tariff policy, even as Senate Democrats prepared to force votes challenging his trade war, The New York Times reported. The maneuver effectively stripped lawmakers of the ability to advance measures to lift tariffs until March 31, 2026, extending a prohibition first imposed in the spring to spare members from taking a politically difficult vote.
“Tariffs not only cause farmers to pay more for their inputs, but they have also seen tariffs reduce markets for U.S. farm products,” said U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, during an October session.
If the November soybean agreement between Trump and the Chinese president holds, Beijing’s purchases would still fall short of recent norms. Even if China buys at least 25 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans annually over the next three years, that volume would remain about 14% below the five-year average shipped to China from 2020 to 2024, according to an analysis from Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture and farmdoc Daily.
April Hemmes grows soybeans and corn on Iowa farmland that her family has owned since 1901. Hemmes is shown here on the farm on April 30, 2025. (Joseph Murphy / Iowa Soybean Association)
Some purchases have started rolling in. But April Hemmes, an Iowa soybean farmer who has promoted increased trade with China, said the agreement would be difficult to fulfill, noting that delivering 12 million metric tons of soybeans by early next year is “not very realistic.”
As China establishes new trade routes across Latin America, every new port or shipping lane makes a future recovery for U.S. farmers more challenging.
Despite the tensions, Hemmes still views China as an essential market.
“I don’t think our relationship with China has been damaged,” the Iowa soybean farmer said. “China is a low-cost buyer and will need soybeans from the U.S. for a long time. But we will never be their number one source.”
For her, the changing politics and policies have made the United States an “unreliable trading partner.”
“The only way that we become their top choice would be if our soybeans were far cheaper than South America’s.”
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