Manure runoff from a dairy farm in Monroe County has caused hundreds of fish kills in nearby waterways, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
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Changes a U.S. House bill makes to the federal program known as FoodShare in Wisconsin would increase costs for the state, the state Department of Health Services (DHS) reports. (Getty Images Creative)
Food and nutrition cuts in the reconciliation bill that passed the U.S. House early Thursday would cost Wisconsin taxpayers at least $314 million if they are signed into law, a state health official said Thursday.
A requirement for the state to pick up some of the costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a provision penalizing the state for errors in distributing benefits, expanded work requirements for recipients and the elimination of a nutrition education program will all contribute to that cost, said Bill Hanna, Medicaid director at the Department of Health Services (DHS) in a briefing for reporters Thursday afternoon.
The SNAP program is known as FoodShare in Wisconsin and administered by DHS.
SNAP currently includes a work requirement for adults ages 18 to 54 without children to receive benefits. The legislation would raise the upper age to 65 and add the requirement to adults with children who are 7 or older.
Wisconsin has an employment and training program to help FoodShare recipients meet the existing work requirement. With the increase in people who would have to meet the requirement, “We estimate that would cost another $44 million a year,” Hanna said.
Currently the federal government funds 100% of the food benefits under SNAP. The new bill requires states to pick up a portion of the cost, which is tied to a state’s error rate, Hanna said. Errors include the payment of more benefits than a person qualifies for or the payment of fewer benefits than they qualify for.
“When errors are identified, we correct them, meaning if there was an overpayment to a member, that is recouped on future benefits, or if there’s an underpayment, we fix that and back pay those payments,” Hanna said.
Wisconsin’s error rate is low enough to require the state to submit only a 5% match for SNAP funds under the House Republican proposal, he said. But another change — which would allow zero tolerance even for errors that in the past have not counted against state programs — would boost the state’s required match to 15%.
DHS estimates based on the proposed new requirements the state would have to pay about $207 million a year in benefit costs, he said. If the state is able to reduce its error rate to qualify for the 5% match, it would still need to pay $69 million a year.
A higher state share of administrative costs in the bill would add $51 million to the state’s costs for SNAP, Hanna said.
The state would also lose the $12 million it receives for SNAP-Ed, a program that provides education to SNAP participants on healthier food choices.
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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress on Tuesday that a major report due out later this week from his agency will not disparage farmers or a commonly used pesticide.
Kennedy, who has long been critical of certain aspects of modern agriculture and processed food, at a U.S. Senate hearing urged lawmakers to read the widely anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report once it’s published Thursday, but didn’t go into details about any possible recommendations.
“Everybody will see the report,” Kennedy said. “And there’s nobody that has a greater commitment to the American farmer than we do. The MAHA movement collapses if we can’t partner with the American farmer in producing a safe, robust and abundant food supply.”
His comments followed stern questioning from Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who said she had read news reports from “reliable sources” that the MAHA Commission’s initial assessment “may unfairly target American agriculture, modern farming practices and the crop protection tools that roughly 2% of our population relies on to help feed the remaining 98%.”
“If Americans lose confidence in the safety and integrity of our food supply due to the unfounded claims that mislead consumers, public health will be at risk,” Hyde-Smith said. “I’ve said this before, and it’s worth saying again, countries have gone to war over many things — politics, religion, race, trade, natural resources, oil, pride, you name it — but threaten a nation’s food supply and allow people to go hungry. Let’s see what happens then.”
Hyde-Smith, who was her home state’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce from 2012 to 2018, probed Kennedy about his past work in environmental law and whether he might be inserting “confirmation bias” into the forthcoming report.
She asked Kennedy if he would try to change the current approval for glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, that she referred to as “one of the most thoroughly studied products of its kind.”
“We’re talking about more than 1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review by the EPA and other leading global health authorities that have affirmed its safety when used as directed,” Hyde-Smith said. “Have you been able to review thousands of studies and decades of scientific review in a matter of months?”
Kennedy responded that her “information about the report is just simply wrong.”
“The drafts that I’ve seen, there is not a single word in them that should worry the American farmer,” Kennedy said.
Hyde-Smith continued her questioning and told Kennedy that it would be “a shame if the MAHA commission issues reports suggesting, without substantial facts and evidence, that our government got things terribly wrong when it reviewed a number of crop protection tools and deemed them to be safe.”
Several other Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee raised concerns during the two-hour hearing about how Kennedy has run HHS since they confirmed him in February.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee, brought up the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which the Trump administration has called on Congress to eliminate.
“The LIHEAP program, which we’ve talked about, is absolutely vital for thousands of older Mainers and low-income families,” Collins said. “It helps them avoid the constant worry of having to choose between keeping warm, buying essential foods and medications and other basic necessities.”
Kennedy sought to distance himself from the president’s budget request, saying that he understands “the critical, historical importance of this program.”
“President (Donald) Trump’s rationale and (the Office of Management and Budget’s) rationale is that President Trump’s energy policies are going to lower the cost of energy … so that everybody will get lower cost heating oil,” Kennedy said.
Subcommittee Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., brought up several issues with Kennedy, including efforts to change how much the National Institutes of Health provides to medical schools and research universities for Facilities and Administrative fees, often called indirect costs.
NIH sought to set that amount at 15% across the board for any institution that receives a research grant from the agency, a significantly lower amount than many of the organizations had negotiated over the years, bringing about strong objections from institutions of higher education.
That NIH policy has not taken effect as several lawsuits work their way through the federal court system.
Kennedy indicated NIH has figured out a way to help medical schools and research universities pay for items like gloves, test tubes and mass spectrometers, particularly at state schools.
“In the public universities, we are very much aware that those universities are using the money well, that it is absolutely necessary for them. And we’re looking at a series of different ways that we can fund those costs through them,” Kennedy said. “But not through the independent, indirect cost structure, which loses all control, which deprives us of all control of how that money is spent.”
Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican, brought up the measles outbreak and pressed Kennedy on whether HHS needed additional resources to help his home state and others get the virus under control.
Kennedy testified the “best way to prevent the spread of measles is through vaccination” and that HHS has been urging “people to get their MMR vaccines.”
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds called on Kennedy to continue fixing issues created earlier this year when HHS fired people working on mine safety issues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
“My office has learned that staff at NIOSH’s Spokane mining research division have been laid off. This office focuses on the unique challenges of Western mining operations that are often more geologically complex and exposed to harsher conditions,” Rounds said. “This division provides critical technical support for institutions like the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, which recently received a $1.25 million grant to improve underground mining safety. However, the grant has now been canceled due to loss of oversight from the Spokane office.
“This is not just a missed opportunity, it undermines our ability to meet national security goals tied to mineral independence and supply chain resilience.”
Kennedy testified that he’s been able to bring back 238 workers at the agency and said he would work with Rounds to address ongoing issues.
Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican, asked Kennedy about news reports earlier this year that HHS would ask Congress to zero out funding for Head Start, one of numerous programs left out of the administration’s skinny budget request. Head Start provides early learning, health, family and development programs for free for children from low-income families.
Kennedy testified that eliminating Head Start would likely not be in the full budget request, which is set to be released later this year, though the White House budget office has not said when. He said it would ask Congress to fully fund the program, but didn’t share a dollar amount.
“There’s 800,000 of the poorest kids in this country who are served by this program. It not only teaches the kids preschool skills — reading, writing and arithmetic — before they get to prepare them for school. But it also teaches the parents and teaches them how to be good parents.”
Kennedy said there are challenges faced by the Head Start program that he hopes to change during the next four years, including the quality of the food.
“The food they’re serving at Head Start is terrible. You need to change that,” Kennedy said. “We’re poisoning the poorest kids from their youngest years, and we’re going to change that.”
A survey of Wisconsin’s farmers found that 56 percent of them believe that climate change is happening, while 95 percent of farmers are practicing some form of sustainable agriculture.
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Wisconsin farmers and producers across the Midwest had more debt and less capital to start the year, increasing the stakes for the 2025 crop.
The post Survey: Farms borrowing more, carrying debt in 2025 appeared first on WPR.
A Wisconsin-based research center focused on improving the health and safety of farmers and their children is under “existential threat” due to federal funding cuts.
The National Farm Medicine Center at the Marshfield Clinic Health System researches the causes of farm injuries and fatalities and provides education to rural communities both in Wisconsin and around the country. It’s also home to the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety, one of 12 agricultural centers across the country funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, or NIOSH.
NIOSH is one of the federal health agencies that were demolished by mass firings under the Trump administration in April. The agency is expected to lose more than 90 percent of its staff.
The National Farm Medicine Center declined WPR’s interview request. But in a newsletter sent last month, director Casper Bendixsen said the cuts pose an “existential threat” to the program, which has relied on NIOSH funding and resources for decades.
“If these cuts hold, approximately three-quarters of the research and outreach carried out by the National Farm Medicine Center is at risk,” Bendixsen wrote in the email. “These potential losses threaten our communities on many fronts. Research, education and prevention of disease and injury in rural places cannot be ignored.”
John Shutske is an agricultural safety and health specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been a longtime collaborator with the center in Marshfield. He said farming is a dangerous occupation, and new health issues continue to emerge as farms change, from exposure to gas from manure pits to injury risks from new farm machinery. That’s why he’s concerned about the uncertain future of grants through NIOSH and similar agencies.
“Without the continued research that’s made possible with federal funding, it would set us back,” Shutske said. “We’ve seen over the last several decades a pretty dramatic decrease overall in our farm fatality rate. And while I think (the number of deaths) would probably plateau, I don’t think we would be able to continue to make the kind of progress that we’ve had.”
Shutske said the National Farm Medicine Center is a significant resource for Wisconsin, helping to study the leading causes of farm fatalities in the state. But he said the center is known nationally for its work to create a safer environment for children on farms.
The program first developed guidelines for age-appropriate farm jobs in the 1990s, and Shutske said they’ve been instrumental in helping rural families better understand a child’s limitations when pitching in around the farm.
“(Children) may be tall enough and strong enough and physically mature enough to operate some piece of equipment, but mentally and cognitively, from a decision-making perspective, they simply are not equipped,” he said. “That whole language piece, of talking about child development as it relates to farm safety, can really be traced back in its roots to the people in Marshfield.”
Mary Miller is a retired occupational health nurse practitioner for the state of Washington who spent her career focusing on protecting children in workplaces. She said the National Children’s Center is one of the only places in the country that focuses on protecting farm kids working for their parents or another family member.
“Historically, that’s been kind of the elephant in the room, frankly, that kids are allowed to do anything and everything on a so-called family farm,” she said.
Miller said researchers in Marshfield have been key leaders in getting guidance to farm parents even when regulations haven’t addressed the issue. She said losing that resource will put children and their families at risk.
Jerry Minor, chief of the Pittsville Fire Department in rural Wood County, said his department has worked with the National Farm Medicine Center since it opened in 1981 to develop guidance for fire departments to respond safely on farms.
“The type of call we get on a farm is usually a pretty high intensity type of call, you know entrapments, severe injuries, and we don’t go to those calls very often,” he said. “We’ve helped them develop programs on how to teach firefighters to enter silos and treat tractor rollovers.”
He said they’ve also created a training program for fire departments that want to proactively work with local farms on improving safety. Rural firefighters are trained to look for common hazards and to provide producers with information on how to safely store farm chemicals or what safety equipment is needed.
More than 170 first responders in 16 states and five Canadian provinces have gone through the training, according to the program’s website.
Minor said these programs are “vital” to both first responders and farm families. He’s worried there will be no one to continue the work if the center loses funding through NIOSH.
“I’m very fearful of what might happen,” he said. “I understand being fiscally responsible, but sometimes you’ve got to sit back and take a look at the bigger picture.”
This story was originally published by WPR.
Federal cuts threaten Wisconsin farm safety center for children, rural communities 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.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden tours Gilbertson's Dairy in Dunn County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
When he was campaigning for Congress in western Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden talked about growing up “in abject rural poverty,” raised by a single mom who relied on food stamps. As a result, he has said, he would never go along with cuts to food assistance.
“He sat down in my office when he first got elected and promised me he wouldn’t ever vote against SNAP because he grew up on it, supposedly,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said in a phone interview as he was on his way home to Wisconsin from Washington this week.
But as Henry Redman reported, Van Orden voted for the Republican budget blueprint, which proposes more than $200 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in order to make room for tax cuts for the very wealthy.
Still, after that vote, Van Orden issued a public statement warning against reckless cuts to SNAP that place “disproportionate burdens on rural states, where food insecurity is often more widespread,” and saying it is unfair to build a budget “on the backs of some of our most vulnerable populations, including hungry children. Period.”
Van Orden sits on the House Agriculture Committee, which was tasked with drawing up a specific plan to cut $230 billion from food assistance to pay for tax cuts. Van Orden reportedly balked at a cost-sharing plan that shifted 25% of the cost of the program to states, saying it was unfair to Wisconsin.
But then, on Wednesday night, Van Orden voted yes as the committee passed an unprecedented cut in federal funding for SNAP on a 29-25 vote.
Van Orden took credit for the plan, which ties cuts to state error rates in determining eligibility and benefit amounts for food assistance. According to WisPolitics, he declared at a House Ag Committee markup that “states are going to have to accept the fact that if they are not administering this program efficiently, that they’re going to have to pay a portion of the program that is equitable, and it makes sense and it is scaled.”
But states, including Wisconsin, don’t have money to make up the gap as the federal government, for the first time ever, withdraws hundreds of millions of dollars for nutrition assistance. Instead, they will reduce coverage, kick people off the program and hunger will increase. The ripple effects include a loss of about $30 billion for farmers who supply food for the program, Democrats on the Ag Committee report, and damage to the broader economy, since every $1 in SNAP benefits generates about $1.50 in economic activity. Grocery stores, food manufacturers rural communities will be hit particularly hard.
Wisconsin will start out with a bill for 5% of the costs of the program in Fiscal Year 2028, according to a bill explanation from the Agriculture Committee. But as error rates vary, that number shifts sharply upward — to 15% when the error rate goes from the current 5% to 6%, to 20% if we exceed an 8% error rate, and so on.
And there are other cuts in the bill, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) points out, including stricter eligibility limits, work requirements that cannot be waived in times of economic hardship and high unemployment, and reductions in benefits that come from eliminating deductions for utility costs.
More than 900,000 children, adults, and seniors count on Wisconsin’s SNAP program, known as FoodShare, according to an analysis of state health department data by Kids Forward. The same analysis found that covering the costs of just 10% of SNAP benefits would cost Wisconsin $136 million.
Alaska and Texas have higher error rates than Wisconsin, and so they — and their hungry kids — are stuck with the biggest cuts. Even if you accept that that is somehow just, the people who are going to pay for this bill in all the states, including ours, are, as Van Orden himself put it, “the most vulnerable populations, including hungry children. Period.”
“He says one thing and does another,” Pocan says of Van Orden’s flip-flopping on SNAP. “He’s gone totally Washington.”
That’s too bad for the people left behind in rural Wisconsin, who will take the brunt of these unnecessary cuts.
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A “SNAP welcomed here” sign is seen at the entrance to a Big Lots store in Portland, Oregon. (Getty Images)
The U.S. House Agriculture Committee approved, 29-25, Wednesday evening its portion of Republicans’ major legislative package that includes a provision that would shift to states some of the responsibility to pay for a major nutrition assistance program.
The bill would require states, for the first time, to cover part of the cost of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits that provide $100 billion per year to help 42 million Americans afford groceries. The measure would also shift more of the administrative cost to states and increase work requirements for recipients.
Republicans are planning to combine the measure with legislation from 10 other committees in a budget reconciliation package that allows the Senate to avoid its usual 60-vote threshold.
House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson said the panel’s bill and its estimated $290 billion deficit savings over a 10-year budget window were necessary for the larger legislative package to extend tax cuts and increase border security and defense spending.
The package would “prevent the largest tax increase in American history on our families, farmers and small businesses, and (would) deliver critical funding necessary for the Trump administration to continue their work keeping Americans safe,” the Pennsylvania Republican said in an opening statement.
Federal Fallout
As federal funding and systems dwindle, states are left to decide how and whether to make up the difference. Read the latest.
“Our reconciliation instructions provide the opportunity to restore integrity to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to make sure that this essential program works for the most vulnerable and functions as Congress has intended.”
Republicans on the panel said throughout a marathon committee meeting, which started Tuesday night and wrapped up more than 26 hours later following an overnight break, that the added work requirements and accountability measures for state governments were overdue reforms.
The panel’s GOP majority approved the bill over unified opposition from Democrats, who argued that the measure would unfairly cut benefits to needy families to pay for tax cuts for high earners, undermine the panel’s bipartisan tradition of fusing crop subsidies with nutrition assistance and overburden state governments that can’t afford to take on the additional cost.
Ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota called the measure “the largest rollback of an anti-hunger program in our nation’s history” which would be felt deeply across a broad swath of recipients.
“We will see children going to bed without dinner, more seniors skipping meals to afford their medicine, more parents sacrificing their own nutrition, so their kids can eat,” Craig said. “Every single one of us knows (the cuts) will take food away from families at a time when working folks are struggling with higher costs.”
The bill would make states pay for up to 25% of SNAP benefits, which are currently entirely covered by the federal government, starting in 2028.
States would be required to pay at least 5%, with the rate rising with a state’s payment error rate. The highest state cost-share would be triggered by a state reaching a 10% or higher error rate.
Even at the lowest state cost-share, the provision would add $4.7 billion overall to annual state obligations, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the center-left think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
But only seven states would have qualified for the lowest cost-share in fiscal 2023, the most recent year for which data is available. The national error rate was 11.7% and more than two dozen states and territories had error rates higher than 10%.
That means in practice the costs to states would be much higher. The three most populous states — California, Texas and Florida — alone would have combined to owe more than $5.7 billion under their 2023 error rates and 2024 benefit amounts.
Republican members said the requirement would incentivize states to better manage their programs.
“Unlike every other state-administered entitlement program, SNAP benefit is 100% funded by the federal government, resulting in minimal incentives for states to control costs, enhance efficiencies and improve outcomes for recipients,” Thompson said.
Democrats said states could ill afford to take on additional costs, meaning the bill would result in cuts to the program or other critical services.
“The massive unfunded mandate this bill forces on states just passes the buck onto state legislatures, forcing them to slash local programs and services, cut benefits, kick vulnerable people off SNAP or raise taxes,” Craig said. “We already know states can’t afford it.”
The change would force difficult decisions for states, several Democrats said.
In Ohio, the state would be on the hook for an additional $534 million annually, Democrat Shontel Brown said.
“That’s not to expand benefits or improve outcomes, that’s just to maintain the status quo.” she said. “To cover the costs, Ohio, along with every other state, is going to have to make brutal tradeoffs. It’s going to mean cutting K-12 education funding, scaling back opioid and mental health treatment programs, reducing Medicaid coverage or putting off critical infrastructure repairs.”
Republicans countered that the provision would bring much needed accountability to state administrators, which would make the program fairer overall.
Alaska had an error rate of nearly 60% in fiscal 2023. Without mentioning that state, Derrick Van Orden, a Republican whose home state of Wisconsin was among the few states with error rates under 6%, said the costs associated with such numerous errors shouldn’t be covered by states with lower rates.
“Overpayments, waste, fraud and abuse have plagued programs like SNAP,” he said. “There is a state that has a 59.59% overpayment rate and my Wisconsinites are not going to pick up that slack.”
States’ error rates include fraud, but it makes up a small share of a category that also includes inadvertent underpayments and overpayments, Michigan Democrat Kristen McDonald Rivet said.
SNAP has a fraud rate of less than 1% and work requirements already exist, McDonald Rivet said. Republicans’ efforts to target fraud and add work requirements wouldn’t reach the cost savings they sought, she said.
“Are there error rates in the states? Sure,” she said. “Should we address it? Absolutely. But the idea that we are going to find $300 billion of cuts — $300 billion of cuts — on that small percentage of people who are not working that are already required to or error rates in the states is just a flat-out lie. What we are really doing is cutting food for people.”
The bill would also increase states’ share of the cost of administering the food assistance program.
Under current law, states and the federal government evenly split the cost of administering the program. The bill would have states shoulder 75% of administrative costs.
Democrats, including the ranking member of the panel’s Nutrition, Foreign Agriculture, and Horticulture Subcommittee, complained that would compound the problems created by the new cost structure for SNAP benefits.
“States will be forced to budget more for SNAP benefits with less for administrators,” Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut said. “With fewer administrative staff, it is inevitable that errors will increase.”
Another section of the bill would expand the number of participants subject to work requirements to receive SNAP benefits.
The proposal would raise from 54 to 64 the age at which a person no longer has to meet work requirements. It would also lower from 18 to 7 the age at which caring for a child exempts a person from work requirements.
Democrats raised and introduced several amendments meant to address the provision, but were outvoted each time.
Kansas Republican Tracey Mann said the changes were not only about improving SNAP efficiency, but would make the program’s rules fairer for those it was meant to serve.
“It is wrong to jeopardize the benefits of the single mom taking care of kids too young to be in school or the disabled or elderly in order to subsidize someone who is perfectly capable of making an honest income but isn’t willing to join the workforce,” Mann said.
“These changes will ensure that individuals are served by the program as it was intended — not as a couch that you can sit on as long as you want, but as a true safety net that gets you back on the ladder of opportunity and back into a job.”
A Marshfield center that provides guidance on appropriate farm jobs for children and on other safety resources could be hobbled without support from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
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Scientists in the Midwest and Great Plains were poised to start research to cut U.S. reliance on fertilizer imports, keep biofuel farming cost-competitive and tackle a potent greenhouse gas.
The post The Trump administration pauses a moonshot push to grow biofuel crops with less fertilizer appeared first on WPR.
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden receives the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden says he’s working on a proposal that would alter two current work authorization programs to make it easier for businesses including farms and hotels to hire immigrant workers.
Van Orden, who sits on the House agriculture committee, told the news outlet NOTUS that he’s working with Trump administration officials on a proposal to alter the H-2A and H-2B visa programs. Both programs currently provide temporary work visas for people working seasonally.
The H-2A program, which is targeted at seasonal farm labor, has frustrated Wisconsin dairy farmers because year-round workers, including in dairy, are not eligible for the program. Immigrant workers comprise an estimated 70% of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms.
“Rocks are heavy. Trees are made of wood. Gravity is real. There’s 20 million illegal aliens here that have been floating agriculture, hospitality and construction for decades, and we need their labor,” Van Orden told NOTUS.
Van Orden said the proposal is in line with the Trump administration’s increased immigration enforcement efforts because it doesn’t offer a pathway to citizenship or encourage an increase in unauthorized crossings of the border while making it easier for people to come to the U.S. to work.
“That’s why people come here illegally, because it’s so hard to come here legally,” Van Orden said. “We’re all working towards the goal of making sure that our economy can maintain its relevancy.”
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Earlier this week we revisited one of two Cleantech Forum Asia 2024 sessions on agri-food innovation, in anticipation of the event’s return to...
The post How This Leading Producer of Starch & Noodles is Driving Climate Resilience through Technology appeared first on Cleantech Group.
Farm Foundation is proud to announce the second cohort of students selected for the Careers in Ag and Food Exploration (CAFE) Student Workshop. This immersive program offers undergraduate students from 1890 land-grant institutions an exclusive opportunity to dive into the diverse and evolving world of agriculture and food systems.
Held at North Carolina A&T State University, the CAFE Workshop equips students with professional development tools, career exploration experiences, and networking connections that extend well beyond the classroom. Over the course of the program, participants engage in hands-on sessions and thought-provoking conversations with leaders across the agri-food value chain—helping them better understand the range of impactful careers available in this vital sector.
“We are thrilled to welcome this talented group of students to the CAFE Student Workshop,” said Jenna Wicks, program manager at Farm Foundation. “The food and agriculture sector offers a wide range of career opportunities, and we are committed to helping the next generation explore these possibilities.”
The CAFE Student Workshop is made possible through support from the SAPLINGS (System Approach to Promote Learning and Innovation for the Next GenerationS) grant—an initiative led in collaboration with North Carolina A&T and funded by an $18.1 million award from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.
We are honored to recognize the 2025 CAFE cohort:
These students represent a promising future across a variety of industries—bringing curiosity, passion, and a desire to grow.
To learn more about the CAFE Student Workshop, visit: farmfoundation.org/cafe-student-workshop
The post Spotlight on the 2025 CAFE Cohort: Discovering Opportunities in Food and Ag appeared first on Farm Foundation.
DNR Secretary-designee Adam Payne and members of the Natural Resources Board at the Jan. 25, 2023 meeting. (Screenshot | DNR)
Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday made two appointments to the Natural Resources Board, the body that sets policy for the state Department of Natural Resources and has been the venue for a number of partisan disputes in recent years.
Evers reappointed Bill Smith, the board’s current chair, to his seat and appointed former Vernon County conservationist Jeff Hastings.
Smith was first appointed to the board in 2019 and worked for the DNR for more than 30 years.
“Over the last several years, the Natural Resources Board has worked on high-profile issues that have captured the attention of the public, and I am glad for the opportunity to continue this important work and advocate for the issues that people across the state feel so passionately about — our state’s green spaces and natural environment,” Smith said in a statement. “My years of experience on the Board lend a unique perspective on the challenges we address as a body, and I am grateful to the governor for the opportunity to continue that work.”
In addition to working for Vernon County, Hastings worked at Trout Unlimited, serving as project manager of its Driftless Area Restoration Effort to conserve cold water fish habitat in western Wisconsin. Hastings is replacing Marcy West, whose term expired Thursday.
“I am thrilled to be able to translate my years of work in conservation to the efforts of the Natural Resources Board,” Hastings said. “It is an honor to take up this role, and I look forward to working together with my fellow members to best serve the interests of Wisconsinites and uphold the responsibility we share to preserve and protect our state’s natural resources and wildlife.”
Members of the seven-person Natural Resources Board serve staggered six-year terms to prevent all appointments being made during one governor’s term. Three members are required to be from the northern part of the state, three members must be from the southern part of the state and there is one at-large member. At least three members must have held a hunting, fishing or trapping license in seven of the 10 years before their nomination.
While the governor appoints members to the board, the Republican controlled Senate confirms them. The board, which has say over hot button issues such as wolf management and water quality standards, has become a regular flash point in the divide between Evers and the Senate.
Both Hastings and Smith will need to be confirmed to their seats, but state law allows them to fill the role in the meantime.
In 2021, Republicans in the Senate worked with former board chairman Frederick Prehn to keep him in his seat on the board for more than a year after his term’s expiration in an effort to keep appointees of Gov. Scott Walker in control of the board.
In 2023, the Senate fired four of Evers’ appointees to the board and last year the Senate failed to confirm another Evers board nominee.
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The USDA announced earlier this month it was ending a $3 billion program to help farmers use climate-friendly practices. (Preston Keres | USDA)
In the first months of the administration of President Donald Trump, organizations working to keep Wisconsin’s environment healthy have seen cuts to key grant programs. Now they are watching for Trump’s retreat from environmental protection to hit communities across the state.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it was cancelling the Climate Smart Commodities Program — a $3 billion effort to fund projects across the country to improve soil health, sequester carbon, reduce methane emissions and encourage other climate-friendly farming practices.
Trump administration officials called the program a “Biden era slush fund,” saying that not enough of the money went directly to farmers. The USDA cancelled projects that did not meet three criteria: a minimum of 65% of funds needed to be going directly to producers, grants must have had one producer enrolled by the end of 2024 and at least one payment must have been made to a producer by the end of 2024.
“The Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities initiative was largely built to advance the green new scam at the benefit of NGOs, not American farmers,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. “The concerns of farmers took a backseat during the Biden Administration. During my short time as Secretary, I have heard directly from our farmers that many of the USDA partnerships are overburdened by red tape, have ambiguous goals, and require complex reporting that push farmers onto the sidelines. We are correcting these mistakes and redirecting our efforts to set our farmers up for an unprecedented era of prosperity.”
A USDA fact sheet published last year states that 28 Wisconsin-based projects were funded by the program. One of the organizations receiving funding was the Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, which has worked to protect the Fox and Wolf Rivers — which are connected to Lake Michigan — for more than three decades in the region of the state most densely occupied by industrial agriculture operations.
On April 22, the Alliance received an official termination notice for two grants it had received through the program to share costs with farmers to institute practices such as cover cropping and no-till planting, according to a statement from the alliance. Both practices help farmers maintain soil health and prevent potentially harmful nutrients such as phosphorus from running off fields and into the local water system.
The grant funding also supported 10 technical support jobs at county land and water departments, Pheasants Forever and the Wisconsin Farmers Union. The loss of the money has resulted in the cancellation of 37 contracts with farmers, 4,000 acres of planned no-till planting going unfunded and, this fall, 16,000 acres of farmland that may not have cover crops planted.
In its statement, the Alliance said that government support for programs like these is an investment that helps farmers long term, even if some of the money doesn’t go directly into their hands.
“We fully support the goal of directing more resources to farmers. In fact, we design our programs with low overhead to ensure dollars go where they matter most,” the Alliance stated. “However, the review process did not account for one important factor: technical assistance is direct farmer support.”
Just because the money doesn’t go straight to the farmers doesn’t mean they don’t benefit, according to the Alliance.
“Farmers often pay out-of-pocket for the kind of expertise our technical staff provide — support that is essential to the success and longevity of conservation practices,” the statement continued. “Excluding this from the ‘producer-directed’ category overlooks the real-world value of those services. Without that guidance, funding becomes a one-time transaction instead of a long-term investment. Fox-Wolf’s model is built not just on providing financial support, but on ensuring that practices are implemented effectively and sustained over time. That’s what makes our work effective — and why this funding mattered.”
Jessica Schultz, the Alliance’s executive director, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the goal of the grants was to help the region’s farmers transition to these soil-friendly practices beyond just one season, allowing the organization to help protect the watershed, which is suffering from “excess phosphorus and sediment loading,” in the long term.
“These practices also improve soil health, but transitioning to a continuous cover system requires a new approach to farm management. This shift can result in short-term yield losses or necessitate investment in new equipment,” Schultz said. “The cost-share provided through our grants would have played a vital role in helping farmers overcome these initial barriers. However, to realize lasting water quality improvements in our rivers and lakes, these conservation practices must be adopted consistently — not just for a single season, but year after year — across the majority of farmland in the basin.”
“The technical assistance offered through our projects was intended to support farmers through this transition, providing both expertise and access to equipment from across the region,” she continued. “Our goal was to foster long-term adoption by equipping producers with the tools and knowledge they need to succeed — not just for one growing season, but for the future health of our local waterways.”
The Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance isn’t the only organization that has lost grant funding since Trump’s inauguration. Wisconsin Green Fire has already had two grants, totaling nearly $100,000, canceled, according to Meleesa Johnson, the organization’s executive director.
The first grant, worth about $32,000, was aimed at working with the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy to develop resources for local governments seeking to implement climate change mitigation strategies such as improving stormwater management and planting more trees to reduce heat island effects. The second grant was a $65,000 contract with the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to establish a farm sustainability rewards program. Similar to the alliance’s grant, that program would have given farmers money in exchange for implementing practices such as no-till planting or reducing the use of nitrogen.
Green Fire had already spent money on getting the farm sustainability program off the ground, and now, according to Johnson, it’s unclear if the organization will be reimbursed.
“We’re not the only ones,” she said. “There’s a lot of groups out there that have been moving along, doing the work, meeting the benchmarks of contract expectations, and now, well, many of us are, most of us are not being paid for the work that we’ve all begun. So it’s hard. It’s not impossible for organizations to regroup, but it just makes it more difficult.”
Johnson said that this program was about getting money directly to farmers — even if the program’s description used the word “carbon.”
“First and foremost, this was about getting money into the hands of farmers either already deploying good conservation practices or wanting to, [who] didn’t have the resources to do it,” she said. “This wasn’t about Green Fire. This was about farmers, and we were just developing the metric and the strategies to make sure that high performing farms with good conservation practices were being rewarded for doing really, really good work.”
Without programs like these, Johnson said, Wisconsin will continue to “see that continual slow degradation of farm fields and water quality.”
As Wisconsin’s planting season gets underway, cuts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and fluctuating tariffs on foreign trading partners are creating a new level of uncertainty for farmers.
The post Wisconsin’s growing season arriving with uncertainty amid USDA cuts, tariffs appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read our methodology to learn how we check claims.
U.S.-Canadian trade of agricultural products, including dairy, is generally done without tariffs.
Tariffs are taxes paid on imported goods.
Canada has set tariffs exceeding 200% for U.S. dairy products.
But the tariffs are imposed only when the amount imported exceeds quotas.
The U.S. “has never gotten close to exceeding” quotas that would trigger Canada’s dairy tariffs, the International Dairy Foods Association said in March.
The Washington, D.C.-based group blamed Canadian “protectionist measures” for the U.S. not exporting enough dairy to reach quotas.
Canada-U.S. trade is tariff-free for almost all agricultural products, the U.S. Agriculture Department said in February.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who represents most of northern Wisconsin, said March 13 “Canada is tariffing us 200%” on dairy.
President Donald Trump made a similar claim March 12 in support of his tariff proposals.
Wisconsin exported $1.4 billion in agricultural products to Canada in 2023, more than double the amount of any other country, according to the latest statistics.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Does Canada impose 200% tariffs on US dairy products? 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.
In northeast Iowa, a wispy stand of trees looks out of place.
It is surrounded by crop fields on the north side of a four-lane highway, an oasis of nature that is uncommon in rural Iowa, where farming every inch of land is paramount.
Its owner hopes to cut and till it for cropland.
But he can’t do it without risking his business. For now.
Jim Conlan, an out-of-state investor in Iowa farmland, knew the federal government considered those nine acres to be a wetland before he bought it as part of a larger tract. If he clears and plows that land, he will lose eligibility for the federally subsidized crop insurance and other benefits that a majority of row crop farmers depend on, under a 1985 law called “Swampbuster.”
Conlan went to court to challenge the law, arguing it violates his constitutionally protected property rights. If he wins, hundreds of thousands of acres in Iowa and other states could be drained, plowed and put into production.
Conlan said he sued after the U.S. Department of Agriculture declined to reclassify the wetland, which is often dry.
“They’re so impossible to deal with,” he said, following a recent federal court hearing in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
He’s represented by the same law firm that persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023 to overturn Clean Water Act protections for vast areas of wetlands because they are not continuously connected to a stream. As they did with the Sackett case, Conlan’s lawyers hope to topple another pillar of the federal government’s wetland conservation policy.
The case describes Swampbuster as unfair and coercive, arguing that it prevents farmers from draining or filling wetlands on their own properties without paying them for taking the land out of production.
“It seemed really egregious to me that farmers — an industry that’s so vital to America and to the world — couldn’t use their own property to do this and weren’t being compensated for it,” said Loren Seehase, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, one of two organizations representing Conlan’s company, CTM Holdings. “As long as they … are getting (federal) benefits, they can’t do anything with that wetland.”
But advocates of the statute say it’s reasonable — the law does not prohibit farmers from draining wetlands on their property.
“This isn’t money that’s owed to these farmers. These are optional grants and insurance programs that the government provides,” said Dani Replogle, a staff attorney at Food & Water Watch. “So there are conditions associated with receiving government money, just like there are conditions associated with receiving Medicare and food stamps.”
Whatever happens in court, people in this part of the world know that one farmer’s decisions about how to manage their land will affect their neighbors.
One of those people, a beginning farmer named Elle Gadient, has 160 acres downstream from Conlan’s property. Gadient’s cropland and pasture swaddle an old white farmhouse at the top of a hill.
She and her husband hope to raise young dairy cattle there in future years.
Gadient is concerned about what happens if Swampbuster goes away. “This is really a program for all farmers and affects water quality that affects all of us,” she said.
Wetlands in the United States have gained appreciation over time for their environmental benefits. They filter pollution, absorb floodwaters and provide habitat for wildlife. But millions of acres have been destroyed since European settlement.
When European settlers arrived in the Midwest in the 1700s, wetlands were an impediment to agriculture. So settlers drained most of them with ditches and, later, perforated underground tubes known as “tiling.”
In the early 1900s, the government helped organize the drainage networks — primarily in the wetter northern parts of Iowa — through the creation of drainage districts.
There are now thousands of these districts, which are overseen by counties and landowners to collectively maintain the vast systems of drain tiling that lie several feet beneath the surface. There are hundreds of thousands of miles of tile in Iowa alone.
In Iowa and Illinois — the nation’s leaders for corn and soybean production — about 90% of those states’ pre-settlement wetlands were converted, primarily to increase their cropland.
Attitudes toward wetland destruction shifted about 40 years ago. Up to that point, USDA programs were not uniformly designed to protect wetlands — some were actively destructive, such as crop commodification and price supports, which encouraged practices that led to more soil erosion and polluted water.
Conservation groups like the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society lobbied for changes to agricultural policies in the 1985 farm bill, or the Food Security Act.
The farm bill is a massive, omnibus measure that funds federal policies for food and agriculture. It is renewed by lawmakers about every five years, and it includes SNAP benefits and crop insurance subsidies for farmers, among other supports. Hundreds of billions of dollars are allocated to cover programs, loans and insurance.
The 1985 bill included the Swampbuster provision, as well as Sodbuster, which was intended to prevent soil erosion.
These provisions bound wetlands protection to USDA loans, payments and assistance programs, including crop insurance and price support. They are key programs that more than 34% of farm households in the U.S. receive, helping them break even in times of drought or low commodity prices. About 95% of both corn and soybeans in Iowa — nearly 23 million acres — are insured, according to the USDA.
And it worked. A 1998 study found that about 12 million acres of U.S. wetlands had been protected under Swampbuster.
But it’s hard to track these threatened ecosystems. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), which oversees Swampbuster rules, does not maintain a searchable database and cannot accurately say how many acres there are, said Sue Snyder Thomas, a former NRCS state compliance specialist.
She said the wetlands often range in size from a half acre to 10 acres in Iowa.
Conlan’s property doesn’t look like a wetland.
It’s not connected directly to a stream. Its surface is often dry and overgrown with grass. There’s a stand of trees on part of it, and the rest is pocked with stumps — the government allows landowners to harvest trees as long as the stumps and roots remain.
But you can’t judge a swamp by its surface water.
NRCS is the judge. Federal regulators evaluate the soil and vegetation for signs that it’s often waterlogged during the growing season. They also review aerial images.
In 2010, the NRCS determined that part of the property was a wetland for the purposes of the Swampbuster rule.
Twelve years later, Conlan bought 72 acres near the town of Delaware for $700,000, according to county records. A little more than half of those acres were farmed at the time.
Conlan has since removed trees from part of the land to grow more corn and soybeans, and he would like to clear the wetland. He asked the NRCS to reevaluate the wetland designation but said he was refused.
Federal rules allow landowners to ask for reevaluations if nature alters the land or if there’s evidence the agency erred.
Wetland designations have been challenged repeatedly in federal court with varying degrees of success, but Conlan’s lawsuit might be the first to question whether the wetland protection program itself is lawful under the Fifth Amendment’s clause that says private property cannot be taken for public use without just compensation.
The lawsuit claims that when USDA designates a piece of farmland as a wetland, it effectively takes that area out of production, barring farmers from draining, filling or cultivating it if they wish to remain eligible for USDA benefits.
While applying for USDA benefits is not mandatory, the lawsuit claims that farmers’ historic reliance on crop insurance and other federal subsidies — coupled with pressures on the nation’s agriculture industry — have made these programs essential to their livelihoods and operations.
And if Conlan violates Swampbuster, he loses the potential for those benefits for all of his Iowa farmland, which totals more than 1,000 acres. Conlan rents the land to farmers and confers the benefits to them.
“They’re basically relinquishing (that) constitutional right in order to receive federal benefits,” said Seehase, the attorney for Conlan’s company. “There are ways to conserve and preserve our environment that still keep those constitutional protections in place.”
CTM Holdings’ lawsuit has sparked action from sustainable agriculture groups in Iowa and neighboring states, which filed a motion to intervene in the case in October 2024. The coalition argues that eliminating or weakening Swampbuster would open the door to further depletion of wetlands, exposing its members to greater flood risk and other environmental hazards and imperiling their properties, crops and overall safety.
The groups challenging the Swampbuster law don’t think it will result in widespread wetlands loss.
“It’s a huge logical misstep to think that every farmer would then till their land and turn it into farmlands,” Seehase said. “Not every farmer is going to do that.”
Others are less optimistic. Corn and soybean prices are down, and costs to grow the crops are up.
“When margins are tight, farmers find every additional acre they can plant corn to plant the corn,” said Aaron Lehman, president of the Iowa Farmers Union, a group of progressive farmers that has intervened to block the lawsuit.
He added: “It would, for sure, accelerate the depletion of our wetlands.”
In 2005, a federal appeals court ruled that the Swampbuster statute is not so “coercive” as to force farmers to comply, nor does USDA act as a “gatekeeper” to farmers developing wetlands on their properties if they so choose.
The wetlands can be transformed into a non-farm use without losing farm subsidies, under the federal rules. And following the Sackett court ruling, Swampbuster is the main federal legal disincentive for farmers who want to drain wetlands that are not continuously connected to navigable waters.
‘You could build a skyscraper on it if you want to.’
Chief U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams, noting that wetlands can be transformed into a non-farm use without losing farm subsidies, under federal rules.
At a March 31 hearing on Conlan’s case in Iowa’s northern district, Chief U.S. District Judge C.J. Williams noted that potential: “You could build a skyscraper on it if you want to,” Williams said.
Williams is considering competing motions in the case to decide the lawsuit before it is set to go to trial in June.
An assistant U.S. attorney representing the USDA argued the case should be tossed out because the agency was willing to take a second look at whether Conlan’s property is a wetland, though the agency admitted botching that message. Conlan is dubious.
Even if the judge agrees it was a miscommunication, he might still decide to weigh the arguments about its constitutionality. Whatever he decides will likely be appealed.
It’s unclear what might happen if the lawsuit succeeds. The federal government could implement a new plan that pays farmers for setting aside flood-prone land that they could otherwise grow crops on.
That still might pit farmer against farmer.
“All my upstream neighbors’ land could be drained, and that water’s got to go somewhere,” said Lehman, who farms in central Iowa. “It’s going to come and make my land less usable.”
That’s disconcerting to Gadient, the young farmer who is downstream from the land at the center of the Iowa lawsuit.
She and her husband have sought to strengthen their farm community, inviting their neighbors for regular breakfasts at their home on the hill.
They hope to graze livestock on their farm but for now have chickens and barn cats that laze about.
The men in the area typically go to a local McDonald’s for coffee in the mornings. The wives go to a women-owned gas station nearby. Gadient hopes that a Swampbuster defeat won’t fray those connections and others like them.
“We love the community,” she said. “We really care about our neighbors.”
This story is part of the series Down the Drain from the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting collaborative 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.
One Iowa landowner fights to farm a designated wetland. Others could face consequences downstream 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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