In 2025 alone, nearly 200 school groups visited, bringing about 8,500 students to learn about agriculture and the many careers connected to food production.
The post Central Wisconsin center helps visitors reconnect with the story behind their food appeared first on WPR.
Opponents of the Ridge Breeze Dairy expansion watch the contested case hearing Tuesday against the farm's permit in the standing room only overflow room at the Eau Claire State Office Building. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
Dozens of western Wisconsin residents packed into rooms at the Eau Claire State Office Building this week for the start of a contested case hearing against the state Department of Natural Resource’s decision to grant a permit allowing Ridge Breeze Dairy to expand its operations to include 6,500 cows.
The Pierce County dairy currently houses 1,700 cows. The expansion would make it the largest factory farm in the seven county region of Barron, Buffalo, Dunn, Pepin, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties.
Local opponents to the Ridge Breeze expansion have been working against the plan since 2024, packing public hearings and combing through public documents. The activists have uncovered inconsistencies in the dairy’s application — which first had to be sent back by the DNR because the farm’s plan for managing its manure said it would spread liquid manure on nearby fields without the permission of the property owners.
If expanded, the farm would produce 80 million gallons of liquid manure every year.
Despite the initial application’s problems and the widespread opposition, the DNR approved the expansion in February 2025.
Tuesday’s hearing was the beginning of the process to challenge that DNR permit decision. The contested case will be decided by Wisconsin Administrative Law Judge Angela Chaput Foy. Foy’s decision will be appealable to the state circuit court system.
On Tuesday, activists involved in the fight against Ridge Breeze tied their work for the past two years to the recent efforts in other parts of the state by residents working to stop the construction of massive AI data centers in their communities.
Both conflicts have brought together people of diverse political persuasions to fight outside corporate interests that try to assert the authority to build whatever they want, no matter what the ramifications are for local water, energy use, economies or quality of life.
“Whether it’s a data center coming into your community, or a massive factory farm like Ridge Breeze, everyday people need to continue to stand together, organize and create greater change that will protect and put the power back into the hands of regular people,” Danny Akenson, an organizer with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin, said at a news conference before the hearing.
Akenson told the Wisconsin Examiner that it’s no surprise that people of “all political stripes” are seeking basic protections for their communities against corporate extraction.
“The reality is that rural America — and really communities of all different sizes, rural, urban, suburban — are standing up against massive corporate overreach and the extraction of wealth from their communities into the pockets of shareholders and investors,” he said.
GRO-WW has been heavily involved in the fight against Ridge Breeze and against the growing popularity of factory farms across western Wisconsin. The organization helped connect the plaintiffs in the contested case with attorneys from Midwest Environmental Advocates to dispute the permit decision.
Their petition against the permit asks that at the very least it be modified to make sure the DNR is monitoring the local water so the farm is held accountable if the state’s groundwater pollution rules are violated.
“There is substantial concern as to whether Ridge Breeze can appropriately manage the manure and process wastewater it intends to generate following expansion,” the petition for review states.
The day began with several hours of public testimony. Members of the public packed into the small conference room where the hearing was held and two overflow rooms, while dozens more watched on the Zoom stream.
Only opponents of the farm expansion testified, largely rehashing the arguments they’ve made against the expansion for years — that it doesn’t have an adequate manure spreading plan, that the farm traffic will be too loud, that the farm’s location will harm local trout streams and that the already high level of nitrates in the local groundwater will only be made worse.
Juliet Tomkins, a retired agricultural lawyer who operates a small Pierce County farm, questioned how the judge would feel if the case were about her drinking water.
“I would like you to think about how you would feel if the regulator of your water supply that keeps you and your family and your loved ones safe failed to keep 80 million gallons of contaminants annually out of your water supply because the regulators inadequately reviewed the contamination procedures, and the result of this inadequate oversight was the permanent contamination of your water, the groundwater, for generations to come,” Tomkins said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
A bill moving through the Wisconsin Legislature would offer low-interest loans to small dairy farmers to boost efficiency as the state’s dairy industry rapidly consolidates into larger industrial operations.
But ahead of the state’s legislative session, which resumed in early January, major farm and dairy industry representatives pushed for changes that would allow large industrial farms to access the loans, according to lobbying communications and draft legislation obtained by Investigate Midwest through open records requests.
The state has lost nearly 18,000 dairy farms over the past two decades and, as of 2022, has roughly 6,000 operating dairy farms, with small-scale farms dwindling rapidly.
Wisconsin dairy farms with fewer than 500 cattle have decreased 67% since 2002. Almost every county in the state has lost at least half of its small farms in that same time, according to an Investigate Midwest USDA data analysis.
Senate Bill 323, introduced in July 2025, would set aside $20 million to create an innovation program for dairy farmers in the state to fund the purchase of new equipment or expand animal health practices to produce more milk. Farmers would apply through the state’s agriculture department.
Bill authors said farmers could also use the funds to develop manure management plans, create products from manure and improve animal health and outputs to produce higher-quality products, such as buttermilk. Medium and small dairy farmers can access up to $500,000 administered by the state’s agricultural department.
The bill was passed by the Senate 18 to 15 on Jan. 21 and can now be heard by the state Assembly.
State Sen. Rob Stafsholt, a New Richmond Republican who authored the bill, said economic sustainability has been an issue brought to him by farm operators throughout his rural, northwestern district.
“Some of the technology that can make farmers as efficient as possible and would help the smaller guys to compete with the bigger guys is often financially out of reach for our small and medium farms,” he said.
The Wisconsin dairy industry is worth nearly $53 billion, and its farms have become increasingly larger in recent years, while the overall number of farms continues to decrease. This trend has created legal clashes between rural towns and dairy farms across the state.
Bigger farms increase profitability by working with consolidated dairy processing companies. Small operations also work with large-scale processors but often rely on boutique dairy product sales, such as those from small-scale creameries or co-ops.
Cost is a major factor in the decline of small farms. The cost of operating a dairy farm in the U.S. has nearly doubled in the last decade, while the price farmers receive for their milk has fallen 15% in the same time frame, according to an analysis of USDA data.
The Wisconsin Farm Bureau and the Dairy Business Association, lobbying and advocacy groups for the state’s dairy and agriculture sector, both asked bill authors to remove the bill’s limit on the number of animal units a farm could have to apply for funding.
In Wisconsin, animal units are a metric primarily used to determine whether a farm meets the threshold for being considered a concentrated animal feeding operation, otherwise known as a CAFO. A single animal unit does not equate to a single animal. For example, a dairy cow is the equivalent of 1.4 animal units, while it would take roughly 30 chickens to equal a single animal unit.
Farms with 1,000 or more animal units have to apply for additional permits through the state’s Department of Natural Resources to manage waste. As farms get larger, increased waste can lead to runoff and pollution problems for nearby communities and waterways. Livestock runoff has been linked to cancers, infant deaths and miscarriages.
The current bill language sets an applicant’s limit at roughly 999 animal units, or roughly 700 dairy cattle.
In a letter to the bill authors, the Wisconsin Farm Bureau requested that the cap be removed, allowing the size of the farm to be part of the determination when applying for funding, rather than disallowing a larger farm from applying altogether.
“By aligning the program’s design with its intent, the bill can more effectively support on-farm innovation and ensure that Wisconsin farmers of all sizes have the opportunity to modernize, improve herd health, and maintain our state’s leadership in agricultural innovation,” the letter stated.
The Dairy Business Association, a trade group headquartered in Green Bay and operated by a board of executives with ties to CAFOs across the state, dairy processors and cheesemakers, told lawmakers in a letter that the state’s large farms provide stability to the milk supply and should be a part of the funding pool.
“A strong dairy economy depends on participation from farms of all sizes,” the letter states. “If this program’s eligibility criteria exclude large farms, the ripple effects will weaken — not strengthen — rural Wisconsin.”
Records show that Dairy Business Association lobbyists met with bill authors soon after the bill text was circulated in early June 2025 to discuss the herd size provision and other concerns with the legislation. The Dairy Business Association did not respond to requests for comment.
The office of state Rep. Clint Moses, a Menomonie Republican who co-introduced a similar bill in the state’s Assembly, provided an early draft of a bill amendment to Dairy Business Association lobbyists ahead of the release of the amendment, according to an Aug. 5, 2025, email.
Despite meetings with lobbyists to express concerns about the bill’s language regarding herd size, the language has not changed to remove the animal unit cap.
Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, said that if the legislation caps farm size, the funding will help more farmers. He said the Wisconsin Farmers Union supports maintaining the animal unit limit in the current legislation and will continue to watch the bill closely.
“The dollars that are available there could be easily swallowed up by two or three of the biggest farms in the state, and then nobody else will be able to be a part of that process,” Von Ruden said.
Stafsholt, the senator who introduced the bill, said that the original purpose of the bill was to support small and medium-sized farms and that keeping a limit on animal units will stop large farms from taking larger pieces of the program’s budget.
“Going forward, I have no intention of switching that number,” he said.
The bill also points to the realities of drafting legislation affecting the dairy industry and navigating the sector’s open secret: undocumented labor.
Draft legislation shows bill authors intent on blocking farms that use undocumented labor from qualifying for the loan program. The current version of the bill would only allow farms that employ workers who are authorized to work in the state to apply for the program.
There are no definitive counts of the number of undocumented laborers working on Wisconsin dairy farms, but research estimates that nearly 70% of the state’s dairy industry relies on undocumented labor.
“I don’t have an issue with (farms) doing what they are doing,” Stafsholt said. “It’s more about following the law. We want to make sure taxpayer dollars funding the dairy cattle innovation program are not necessarily being utilized by those who fail to follow the basic law.”
In September 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested dairy farm workers in Manitowoc County as part of a larger raid in the area. This comes as ICE raids have hit major agricultural industries and cities, detaining workers and increasing anxiety throughout the labor force.
Lobbyists from both the Farm Bureau and the Dairy Business Association initially expressed concerns about the impact this limitation would have.
In an August email from a member of Stafsholt’s staff to the senator, meeting notes show that Dairy Business Association representatives expressed concerns about the original requirement that farms employ only individuals legally authorized to work in Wisconsin, but that language remains in the current version.
“After conversations with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection on how the bill provision will be facilitated and discussions with the bill authors, staff, and stakeholders, we are not prioritizing changing that provision,” Jason Mugnaini, a Wisconsin Farm Bureau lobbyist, told Investigate Midwest in December.
This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
CAFOs want in on proposal meant to help Wisconsin’s small dairy farms 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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.
China is investing billions in Latin America, potentially sidelining US farmers for decades to come 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.
Tyler Stafslien is a fourth-generation farmer who’s worked his family’s land in central North Dakota for about 20 years. Roughly half of his 2,500 acres is typically dedicated to soybeans, a major crop in the state and in the Mississippi River Basin. But growing soybeans has become less profitable over the last decade as input costs rose and the Trump administration’s tariff negotiations in 2018 and 2025 destabilized trade and strained farmers’ incomes.
This year, wary of the precarious export market, Stafslien decreased his soybean acres by half.
“We’ve been experiencing in ag, the last couple of years, a downturn in commodity prices, a lot of that related to just a large supply across the globe of major commodities, but then you add this trade war on top of it, and it’s like the icing on the cake,” Stafslien said.
The administration this month announced a $12 billion fund for one-time payments to row crop farmers to offset a portion of their inflation- and trade-related losses in the 2025 crop year.
Farmers were asking for the federal relief funds and are happy the administration is finally answering, said Stafslien. But he’s still facing uncertainty. The administration has yet to announce how much money per acre eligible growers will be receiving, and the funds will not be distributed until February, further stressing farmers like him with large debt and growing interest.
“Payments announced this week must be followed by additional and expedient efforts to keep farmers on the land and to improve the farm safety net, leaving annual bailouts as cautionary historical context rather than ongoing policy,” David Howard, policy development director of the National Young Farmers Coalition, wrote in a statement earlier in December.
Farmers and farming associations are looking for longer-term solutions: to diversify trade partners and increase domestic uses for soybeans as export revenues become less certain. Some, like Stafslien, are shifting to other crops, like corn and wheat.
Soybeans are the largest agricultural export in the U.S. The legume covers more than 81 million acres — or 10% — of all U.S. farmland, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in September, and more than 40% of the nation’s soybeans are exported to other countries.
U.S. farmers received $24.5 billion from soybean exports in 2024, with Chinese purchases accounting for $12.6 billion – roughly twice the amount purchased by the next five largest export partners combined, according to USDA data.
But this year, China stopped purchasing U.S. soybeans during tariff negotiations with the Trump administration, instead falling back on its relationships with Brazil and other South American countries to meet its soybean needs. For U.S. soybean farmers, this growing season ends with low prices, unsold harvests, big financial losses and uncertainty going into the next season despite a tentative new deal with China.
“We learned firsthand that being heavily reliant on China for export sales is only good when things are good,” said Andrew Muhammad, University of Tennessee professor of agricultural and resource economics.
Soybeans brought by traders and missionaries from Asia first took root in North America in small quantities in the 1700s, but the USDA did not begin tracking soybeans as a crop until the early 1920s.
Around that time, the USDA, land grant university extension agents and farm groups started to promote the soybean to farmers as a soil-fertilizing crop that yielded high-protein meal for animal feed, oil and even meat replacements for human consumption. The Mississippi River Basin’s flat plains and intermittent rain proved to be ideal conditions for the crop.
Soybeans gained a foothold on U.S. farms in “fits and starts” over several decades, author Matthew Roth writes in his book, “Magic Bean: The Rise of Soy in America,” but really took off as a cash crop after World War I. Its success was later buoyed by the Agricultural Adjustment Act that allowed soy plantings while restricting other commodities as a way to stabilize crop prices during the Great Depression, policies limiting foreign oils, and the growing need for animal feed and oil during World War II, according to Roth.
The crop helped diversify farming in the South and Midwest. By the 1960s, Roth writes, “the soybean had insinuated itself thoroughly into the American diet,” but indirectly – as feed for the country’s livestock, oils for salads and derivatives in processed foods.
At the same time, soybeans proved to be a desirable product for international trade partners. In 1989, U.S. soybean exports totaled around $4 billion, about a fifth of which went to Japan. The Freedom to Farm Act in 1996 allowed farmers to plant single-crop fields, and with rising export demand from China starting in the early 1990s, many farmers chose to plant soybeans, Roth wrote.
In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization and gained better access to globalized trade with the organization’s members, including the U.S., according to Muhammad and the Council on Foreign Relations. From there, growth in China’s tourism economy and middle class spurred increased demand for meat protein, Muhammad said, heightening the country’s need for animal feed in the form of U.S. soybeans.
By 2000, the crop was planted on more than 74 million U.S. acres, according to the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
“Over time, China has grown, and it seems to be the case that our total export sales have grown with our exports to China,” Muhammad explained. “They’ve sort of driven that rise over the last two decades.”
Brazil’s soybean industry has competed with American exports since the 1970s, but since 2017 has consistently exported more than the U.S.
When Trump first upped tariffs on Chinese goods in 2018, China retaliated, Muhammad said, and began investing more heavily in purchases and transportation infrastructure in Brazil. The turn toward Brazil as a primary provider during trade negotiations in 2025 “represents a return on that investment (for China),” he said.
Farmers in the U.S. are reckoning with the fallout.
Justin Sherlock farms 2,400 acres of corn and soybeans in eastern North Dakota. His dad started farming in the early 2000s and he took over the farm in 2012.
“The last, you know, 13 years that I’ve been going, the last decade, has been pretty tough to really try and get established,” he said.
For Sherlock, China coming to market very late in the 2025 harvest season was a blow to profits. Nearly one-quarter of the state’s agricultural exports hinge on soybeans, with China serving as the largest market for U.S. grain.
Sherlock was able to sell most of his soybean crop early to North Dakota soybean elevators — facilities that store the beans — which then found domestic processors in Nebraska and Kansas to sell to. But those domestic markets were also absorbing the supply that would typically be exported to China, so prices — around $8.65 per bushel — dropped significantly below Sherlock’s cost of production. He said he will lose “several hundred thousands of dollars” this year, on top of similar losses last year.
“We just have to find a way to hopefully make it to next year,” he said. “That’s the struggle right now for a lot of producers.”
Especially for young or beginning producers, said Sherlock, farmers will likely be having “tough financial discussions with their bankers and lenders.” Or, worst case scenario, these losses could mean losing their farms.
“You cannot have a successful agriculture industry in North Dakota without trade,” he said. “It’s so important that we fix these trade relationships and get back to doing business with other countries.”
Trade uncertainty was keenly felt by soybean farmers in several Mississippi River Basin states, many of which lead the nation in soybean production and exports.
Illinois accounts for 16% of the country’s total soybean exports, followed by Iowa with 13%, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. North Dakota comprises 5% of national exports.
Even in states that aren’t among the country’s top producers, soybeans can make up a significant portion of the state farm economy. Tennessee ranks 16th in the nation for soybean exports, for example, but soybeans were the highest-ranked agricultural commodity produced in the state in 2023, bringing in more than $990 million in cash receipts. In 2025, soybeans covered nearly 1.5 million acres of Tennessee farmland – the most of any crop in the state – according to the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture.
New crush facilities that separate the beans into oil and meal are under construction in North Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio — states that previously shipped soybeans to other countries to be processed.
The USDA’s Economic Research Service reported in July that more soybeans are being processed domestically. Most of the soybeans that stay in the U.S. are crushed into oil and meal, and a majority of that meal goes toward feeding livestock. The oil is used in biofuels, for industrial uses, and in food. New crush facilities that separate the beans into oil and meal are under construction in North Dakota, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio — states that previously shipped soybeans to other countries to be processed. Biofuel has increased domestic demand for soybeans — and crush facilities — since around 2010, providing an alternative for farmers facing lower demand from traditional export partners.
April Hemmes, a fourth-generation farmer in north-central Iowa, said in September that she is fortunate to have nearby options for her beans: There is an ethanol plant and a crush facility that makes soybean meal, biodiesel and food-grade oil, about 10 miles away from her farm. Farmers who don’t have those options will have a harder time adapting to changing export markets, she wrote in an email.
The lack of money in farmers’ pockets is trickling down to other sectors in farming communities, too, said John Bartman, a regenerative farmer working about 850 acres in northern Illinois. He pointed to farm equipment dealers and factories in Illinois and Iowa that are shuttering well-paying jobs because business has been so slow.
“So it’s more than just farmers who have been affected by this,” Bartman said.
In October, China and the U.S. hammered out a trade agreement. China agreed to purchase at least 12 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans by the end of the year, according to the White House, and will purchase at least 25 million metric tons each year through 2028. USDA export sales data from Oct. 2 through Dec. 8 shows China made soybean purchases from the U.S. totaling about 2.8 million metric tons.
For comparison, China purchased an annual average of 29 million metric tons of soybeans from the United States between 2020 and 2024, according to The Center for Strategic and International Studies, an international public policy think tank.
The deal “really isn’t much of a trade deal at all,” Bartman said.
“We’ve just gone through this tariff war, which we’re still going through right now, and what did we get out of it? China agreed to buy less soybeans than what we had last year, and we as farmers have suffered the collateral damage from this,” Bartman said.
With low trade prices and higher input costs, he warned, “we have not improved our economic situation for next year.”
Bartman is among farmers who are promoting investment in domestic uses for soybeans, including biofuels and plastics, though he acknowledges that a market the size of China’s will be “very difficult” to replace.
Muhammad said the turbulence in the soybean exports market shows that disruption of stable trade policy has consequences, which can hurt some sectors more than others.
The U.S. agriculture sector is often a political target in trade disputes, he said, because other countries understand the agricultural community’s significance in U.S. politics.
“It’s not a major export in the context of all exports, but it’s a politically viable community, and it carries a lot of heft in the context of trade agreements and trade policy because of the national security nature of food,” Muhammad said.
Farmers who are eligible for the Trump administration’s $12 billion Farmer Bridge Assistance program should expect the USDA to announce payment rates for crops the week of Dec. 22, according to the department. Payments are limited to up to $155,000 per person or legal entity.
The program appears similar to a $10 billion aid package offered to farmers impacted by trade retaliation in 2018. Those subsidies did not cover all of farmers’ losses.
For many farmers like Sherlock, these subsidies are a necessity for short-term survival. He said any farming subsidies he receives go straight to paying his bills and paying off loans.
“There will be a lot of producers, especially young, beginning producers, who won’t be able to make it and farm next year if we don’t do something to help them pay their bills from this year,” he said.
Even established producers are worried. Stafslien works land that’s been in his family since 1912, but the tough years are piling up.
“This is my future. This is my retirement. I don’t have a 401k plan. I have a farm,” said Stafslien, who lives on the farm with his wife, Shannon, and their two kids. “If I have to keep burning through this equity, that’s very, very scary for my future and my family’s future.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.
Soybeans have been a top US ag export for decades. What happens when the top buyer stops buying? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
The agricultural industry is feeling the strain from President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, and Republican lawmakers are certainly hearing about it back home.
What elected officials will do about farmers’ frustrations is much less clear — an indication that relief could be far away.
“Members are beginning to talk about it, but it doesn’t feel as though a particular solution is coming into focus yet, and clearly the White House is going to be the most important player in these conversations,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee.
Ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in agricultural centers, from California to Wisconsin to New York, have increased pressure on members of Congress to provide fixes for farmers who say they are facing labor shortages.
In Wisconsin, for example, a 2023 University of Wisconsin study found that 70% of labor on the state’s dairy farms was done by undocumented workers. Many of those farmers have turned to existing temporary visas — like the H-2A visa, a seasonal agricultural visa — to staff their farms. The Trump administration moved to strip back labor protections for farmers hiring workers on the visa earlier this year, in an effort to streamline H-2A visas.
But those visas are inherently limited for year-round work, like at dairy farms.
The program is also associated with high costs and a slow-moving bureaucracy. Democrats and immigrant advocates said the administration’s move put workers at risk of abuse and exploitation. Approximately 17% of agricultural workers have an H-2A visa.
There are currently several proposed reforms floating around the Capitol.
A bipartisan bill introduced in May by Reps. Dan Newhouse and Zoe Lofgren proposes streamlining the H-2A visa process and providing visas for year-round agricultural employers.
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden has proposed legislation that would allow undocumented farmworkers to gain legal employment status, as long as they haven’t committed a crime. Both immigrants and their employers would be required to acknowledge the worker’s status and pay a fine.
“We got to understand, at this point these people are our neighbors. Our kids go to school together, and they’re part of our communities,” Van Orden said. “I don’t want these people having to hide underneath a trailer when immigration shows up.”
Van Orden’s bill has no co-sponsors.
Lawmakers formed a task force in 2023 to consider possible reforms to the H-2A visa program and improve the industry’s reliable labor shortage.
The Republican-majority House Committee on Agriculture has readied a bill that largely follows task force recommendations — which include proposals to streamline administrative paperwork, expedite application review by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and change the wage system — to overhaul the H-2A program.
Committee chair Rep. Glenn Thompson said the bill is awaiting “technical assistance” from the Department of Labor. That final step had been delayed by shutdown furloughs, he said. The Department of Labor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“We’re very close to introducing a very strong, I’ll call it a tripartisan bill, because that includes Republicans, Democrats and individuals from the industry,” Thompson said.
The bill draft is expected to be ready for public review by early January.
Rep. Salud Carbajal, a Democrat on the agriculture committee, however, says he hasn’t heard from his Republican colleagues or the White House on the issue.
“There’s been no communication from my colleagues on the other side and from this administration,” he said.
Republicans say the White House is engaged on the issue. Thompson told NOTUS that he’s been in “frequent discussions” with the White House and the Department of Agriculture about immigrant farmworkers.
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who also sits on the House Agriculture Committee, said the White House is “in the mood here to engage” on farmworker visas.
“A while back, the president acknowledged in a speech that we got to up the game on having more and simpler processes for having farm workers available. I know we feel that in California with our specialty crops,” LaMalfa said.
Trump in June suggested that farms would get a pass in the deportation crackdown — a statement that senior administration officials seemed to disagree with.
Immigration advocates haven’t been happy with the administration’s visa policy changes thus far.
Alexandra Sossa, the chief executive officer with the Farmworker and Landscaper Advocacy Project, said that her organization is “not in favor” of the H-2A visa program, which it associates with “human labor trafficking and labor exploitation.”
And now, with the ongoing immigration raids, she says, farmworkers who are brought to the country under the visa program fear deportation, and those who are considering coming under the program are apprehensive about doing so.
“We are talking about workers who wake up at 4 a.m. in the morning and start working at 5 a.m. and end working around 9 to 10 p.m., Monday to Sunday. So that’s not easy to find, and it’s a difficult job to do. The consequences on the economy are reflected when you go to the grocery store to buy food,” Sossa said.
Democrats, meanwhile, are calling for larger immigration reform to address the dangerous working conditions that the H-2A program has led to, while also giving a bigger pathway to work.
“When people are exploited, we’ve got to crack down on that,” Rep. Jim McGovern, a Democrat on the House Committee on Agriculture, said about the concerns regarding H-2A visas. “But I just think the climate that’s been created by this administration makes it difficult for some Republicans to even want to talk about the issue.”
“I hear from farmers all the time about concerns that their labor force will disappear, or that they can’t count on workers,” McGovern said.
This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.
Farmers are feeling the squeeze from Trump’s mass deportations. Congress isn’t close to a fix. 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.
When Levi Lyle was just six years old, his father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
With treatment, his father survived his diagnosis. The ordeal changed how he farmed.
“It created an openness in his approach to farming to start doing things differently,” Lyle said.
His father started no-till farming when the practice was still rare in Iowa. A decade ago, when Lyle, now 47, moved back to the family farm, he and his father jumped into organic farming.
“My experiences seeing my father overcome cancer, along with the Agricultural Health Survey’s Midwest cancer statistics, which point to a rural health crisis, inspire me to farm differently,” he said.
Today, Lyle grows corn and soybeans in Keokuk County, in southeast Iowa. Lyle farms about 250 acres, with 40 acres of that organic-certified. His father farms an additional 250 acres.
Lyle said introducing cover crops into his practice was a “no-brainer.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, cover crops are usually grasses or legumes that are planted between cash crop seasons to provide soil cover and improve soil health. Cover crops can reduce erosion and compaction, improve soil’s ability to hold water, reduce nutrient runoff, suppress weeds, as well as provide other services.
Despite being an advocate for cover crops, Lyle said the practice does present challenges.
“The initial challenge is that there is more labor involved,” Lyle said. Cover crops “do not pay for themselves in the short run.”
In the U.S. more than 153,000 farms had land planted in cover crops in 2022.
In Iowa specifically, the use of cover crops has expanded significantly in recent years, growing from 1.3 million acres in 2022 to 3.8 million acres in 2024.
The conservation practice is promoted by the state through cost share incentives. It’s an effort by the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to reduce the nutrients that go into local waters, make their way into the Mississippi River and ultimately contribute to the Gulf Dead Zone, an annually reoccurring area of reduced oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico.
According to the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy, an initiative aimed at reducing nitrogen and phosphorus runoff into Iowa’s waterways, to achieve 45% nutrient reduction will require about 14 million additional acres of cover crops to be planted.
But a study published in July 2025 in the Society & Natural Resources Journal found that while the number of acres being planted with cover crops has grown, many farmers abandon the practice after one year.
“This study shows that adoption is not a one-time decision — it’s a dynamic process influenced by a range of factors,” co-author Suraj Upadhaya, assistant professor of sustainable systems at Kentucky State University, said in a news release about the study.
Chris Morris, a postdoctoral research associate at Iowa State University, was part of a research team that interviewed more than 3,000 Iowa farmers between 2015 and 2019.
The survey showed that nearly 20% of the farmers who reported planting cover crops on their land the first year had ceased using them the following year.
However, the survey found that most of those farmers (15%) would be open to resuming the practice in the future.
Only about 4% of the farmers who participated in the survey said they have no intention of using cover crops again.
“What we found was a whole lot more shifting back and forth than we anticipated,” J. Arbuckle, professor of rural sociology at ISU, said.
Nationwide, in 2022, nearly 18 million acres, or 4.7% of total U.S. cropland, had cover crops, up 17% from 2017.
Cover crop use is most common in the eastern U.S. In states along the Mississippi River, Iowa had the most acreage with cover crops in 2022, but Wisconsin had the highest percentage of its cropland using cover crops, at nearly 8%. All 10 states saw an increase in cover crop usage from 2012 to 2022, though some states, like Tennessee and Kentucky, saw a drop in cover crop use from 2017 to 2022.
Experts say cover crops present challenges to farmers that can act as barriers to permanent adoption.
Anna Morrow, senior program manager with the Midwest Cover Crops Council, said one hurdle is that cover crop planting overlaps with the busy harvest season.
“Cover crops are a practice where a lot of the labor is right at a peak labor time in our season, right? So obviously (farmers) have to prioritize the cash crop so that they get paid,” Morrow said.
“It’s complicated because a lot of farmers are doing the cover crops in the winter, so between getting the current crop harvested, planting the cover crop, getting that terminated before the next crop, if this cover crop is not going to work in that schedule, it’s going to be abandoned,” Morris said.
Morris said barriers beyond timing abound, too, like the cost of purchasing and planting cover crops, balancing the cover crops with other farm work, and challenges that come with farming on rented land.
“A lot of farmers are in really short-term leases, and a lot of farmers feel like landlords aren’t interested in investing in conservation practices on rented land because they may or may not be farming that land one or two or three years from now,” Arbuckle said.
In Lyle’s case, he owns the 40 acres he uses for organic farming, but he and his father lease the rest of their land. They plant cover crops on both the land they own and rent.
Lyle said for him it’s “economically justifiable” to plant cover crops on his leased land because he expects a “reduction in number of field passes, reduced herbicides and reduced fertilizer use due to the nutrient scavenging capacity of cover crops.”
To address cost barriers and encourage the use of cover crops, various federal and state programs offer cost-share incentives. Lyle said this year he has been awarded cover crop funding for 150 acres, getting paid $10 per acre. On average, it costs producers about $60 per acre to pay for cover crops.
Morris said these programs are helpful, but farmers told him they often don’t pay enough, require complicated, time-sucking paperwork and only last one to three years.
But cover crops are a long game, Morris said. While use of cover crops can reduce the need for fertilizer, increase soil health and lead to better productivity, he said those benefits can be difficult to measure and can take years to materialize.
“It’s hard for farmers to justify that high economic cost of cover crops in any given year if there’s not going to be an immediate payoff. Most of these farmers are making marginal profits in any given year, if any, and some are at a net loss. So, there’s a huge weight on farmers’ shoulders of trying to keep the farm going, especially if it’s a farm that’s been in their families for generations,” Morris said. “Anything that could potentially put them out of business is going to seem like a threat.”
Cover crops are generally not harvested; rather, their benefits come from simply being on the land. At the end of their life they’re terminated using herbicides or manual methods, like mowing, and tilled into the soil or left atop it as mulch.
But the Forever Green Initiative, which is housed at the University of Minnesota, works to increase cover crop adoption in Minnesota by developing varieties that can improve soil health and also be harvested for sale.
“Agricultural science has not focused on this until very recently, so there are very few options for farmers to do that,” said Mitch Hunter, co-director of the Forever Green Initiative. “We’re working on over 15 different species, and they’re all aimed at filling that niche of a harvestable over winter crop that is winter hardy in the Upper Midwest that can fit into existing crop rotations or become part of a more diverse rotation and as a market.”
He said some commercial and harvestable cover crops have included winter camelina and the perennial grain Kernza, a cousin to annual wheat. He said those crops are “on the cusp of being commercial.” Commercialized cover crops also include alfalfa, winter barley and winter durum.
“The whole point is to fill that gap,” Hunter said.
Pivoting to cover crops that can be harvested and sold is a “natural progression” for many farmers, Morrow said.
“If they start to try cover crops, and they say, ‘Hey, this is working, and I’m seeing benefits.’ And then they’ll say, ‘Well, why can’t I do a winter annual crop and get some cash from this?’” Morrow said. “The Midwest (is) pretty focused on corn and soybeans, but I think there’s some growing interest in winter, annual cash crops.”
Meanwhile, the overall number of acres invested in cover crop practices has been increasing in recent years, even with some disadoption.
“This study really reflects that farming is a year-to-year business,” said Sean Stokes, research director at the Rodale Institute Midwest Organic Center in Marion, Iowa. “A farmer might only plant a cover crop, like cereal rye, before soybeans, and then when they go to corn the next year, they might not plant that again. But then when they go back to soybeans, they might use cover crops again.”
“Every farmer and every farm is unique, and they’re all going to have different motivations for what’s driving their cover crop adoption,” he said.
Stokes said these motivations could include concerns over water quality or improving soil health.
“For a lot of farmers, it’s a business decision,” Stokes said. “Are they going to see more money per acre in the following years when using cover crops or are they going to lose money? That’s where there is some risk.”
For Lyle, it’s a risk work taking.
“Every acre in the Midwest would benefit from being cover cropped,” Lyle said.
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Wisconsin Watch is a member of the Ag & Water Desk network. Sign up for our newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.
As cover crop use grows, many farmers struggle to commit to the practice 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.
Soil carbon and carbon farming deal with organic carbon that is present or stored in soil. It occurs when animals and plants that...
The post Generating Carbon Offsets in Carbon Farming appeared first on Cleantech Group.
Farm Foundation is honored to announce a generous gift from Riley Boschma in support of the Farm Family Wellness Alliance, a national initiative dedicated to providing mental health resources to farmers and their families. This meaningful contribution honors the memory of Riley’s husband, Jimmy Boschma, a respected farmer whose life was tragically impacted by the challenges of mental health.
Riley has been rooted in agriculture for generations, embodying the resilience and dedication that define the farming community. Yet, like so many in the industry, they have experienced firsthand the immense pressures that come with farming. In 2024, their beloved Jimmy lost his struggle to maintain mental health, leaving behind a grieving wife and five young children determined to turn their loss into hope for others. In response to their personal loss, Riley has committed to supporting mental health awareness and access to resources for farm families nationwide.
“Our family understands the struggles that so many in agriculture face, and we want Jimmy’s story to raise awareness and be a beacon of hope, encouraging others to seek help when they need it. Asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness—it does not define who you are, but rather shows your courage to keep going,” said Riley Boschma. “Through this gift, we hope to ensure that farm families have access to the mental health support they need and to reduce the stigma that prevents many from seeking help.”
The Farm Family Wellness Alliance, an initiative of Farm Foundation in partnership with most major agricultural organizations in the US, including 4H, American Farmer Bureau Federation, FFA, Farmers Union, and others, provides farm families with free, confidential access to mental health support through an online peer-to-peer community, professional resources, and crisis intervention services. Since its national launch in 2024, the program has expanded to serve farmers and agricultural communities across 47 states, offering a safe space for connection and healing through TogetherAll, an online mental health support community exclusively for American farm family members aged 16 and above.
“The generosity of Riley Boschma and her children will have a lasting impact on the lives of so many in agriculture,” said Shari Rogge-Fidler, CEO of Farm Foundation. “This gift not only honors Jimmy’s legacy but also strengthens our ability to reach more farm families with critical mental health resources. We are grateful for their commitment to creating meaningful change in the industry.”
Farmers are the backbone of our nation, yet they often carry an invisible burden. As economic pressures, unpredictable weather, and the weight of legacy continue to challenge those in agriculture, access to mental health support is more vital than ever. Riley’s contribution underscores the urgent need for expanded resources in rural communities and serves as a call to action for others to invest in the well-being of those who feed the nation. Learn more about the Boschma farm at www.boschmafarms.org
The post The Gift of Hope: Dedication to Mental Health in Rural Communities appeared first on Farm Foundation.
Farm Foundation recently hosted a thought-provoking panel discussion in partnership with the Farm Robotics Challenge, offering college students a unique opportunity to gain insight into real-world agricultural challenges and how technology can play a pivotal role in addressing them. The panel brought together voices from across the agricultural value chain—farmers, innovators, and industry leaders—to discuss the future of robotics in farming and provide direct feedback to the student teams as they embark on their robotics projects.
If you would like to watch the panel discussion, you can access the full recording here.
The panel featured an incredible lineup of experts and practitioners who shared their perspectives:
Klaas Martens: Klaas is a third-generation farmer in New York. He operates Martens Farm and Lakeview Organic Grain Mill with his wife Mary Howell Martens and their son Peter. On 1,600 acres, he produces numerous crops, including corn, soybeans, spelt, wheat, einkorn, emmer, triticale, buckwheat, oats, barley, rye, cabbage, dry beans, and hay. He’s been farming since the 1970s and shifted to organic farming in the 90s. Klaas is a Farm Foundation Round Table Fellow.
David Hill: Southern Hill Farms, owned and operated by the Hill family, has deep roots in agriculture. David and Lisa Hill, along with their sons Michael and Kyle and daughter-in-law Brooke, continue a farming legacy that began with Lisa’s grandfather in Virginia and extended to Central Florida in the mid-20th century. Starting with ornamental trees in Clermont, the Hills diversified in 2010 by planting blueberries, eventually welcoming the public in 2014 for u-pick events and community gatherings. Today, Southern Hill Farms is a beloved Central Florida destination, known for its Fall Festival, farm market, and family-friendly experiences. David is also a Farm Foundation Round Table Fellow.
Kevin Seidel: Kevin Seidl is a group product manager for the John Deere Operations Center
(JDOC) at John Deere. He leads a group of product managers responsible for key features within the JDOC, with a specific focus on live remote monitoring and equipment & agronomic analysis capabilities. As a software engineer, Kevin has built some of the foundational features of the JDOC program. Throughout his 15-plus years at John Deere, he has had various product management roles of increasing responsibility, where he has focused on the JDOC’s monitoring and analysis capabilities. Kevin earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bradley University and a master’s in business administration from the University of Iowa.
Moderator: Tim Brennan, VP of Programs and Strategic Impact at Farm Foundation, who guided the discussion and connected the insights to Farm Foundation’s broader mission.
1. Automation and the Labor Shortage
Farmers face ongoing labor shortages, making automation and robotics an urgent need rather than a luxury. Panelists emphasized that technology should not replace workers but rather enable farmers to address gaps in their workforce. Solutions like autonomous machinery and follow-me functionality were highlighted as transformative tools that could alleviate these challenges.
2. Harvesting Challenges and Opportunities
One of the most pressing issues discussed was the need for robotics to address harvesting challenges, particularly in specialty crops like strawberries. Unlike blueberries, which already have some mechanical solutions, strawberries require precision to pick ripe fruit without damage. Developing robotics capable of 24/7 harvesting could revolutionize the industry.
3. Smaller, Smarter Machines for Soil Health
Larger machinery has contributed to significant soil health concerns, including compaction and increased energy use. Panelists discussed the opportunity for robotics to lead the way toward smaller, lighter, and more collaborative machines. These innovations would not only protect soil but also reduce operational energy demands.
4. Practical, Farmer-Centered Solutions
A recurring theme throughout the discussion was the importance of creating practical, problem-solving technology. Farmers need innovations that work in diverse conditions, are reliable, and solve specific challenges like soil conditions or adverse weather.
Hosting this panel aligns directly with Farm Foundation’s mission: to build trust and understanding at the intersections of agriculture and society. By partnering with the Farm Robotics Challenge, Farm Foundation supports the next generation of innovators and provides a vital space for collaboration between farmers and technology developers.
This event highlighted the importance of bringing real-world agricultural perspectives to the forefront, ensuring that technology is grounded in practicality and addresses the evolving needs of those throughout the food and agriculture value chain.
As the student teams dive into their robotics projects, we look forward to seeing how their ideas take shape and how they tackle the challenges outlined during the panel. The Farm Robotics Challenge serves as a testament to the power of collaboration and innovation in shaping the future of agriculture.
We’re proud to continue fostering connections between agriculture, technology, and society, and we can’t wait to see how these students contribute to a more innovative and sustainable agricultural future.
The post Bridging Innovation and Agriculture: Insights from the Farm Robotics Challenge Panel appeared first on Farm Foundation.
Farm Foundation’s Meet Your Farmer podcast featured Steve Kaufman in season 1, episode 3.
Steve is a fifth-generation farmer. He returned to his family’s Idaho farm full time in 2014 when his uncles and father were ready to retire. He and his two brothers farm 14,000 dryland crop acres, growing primarily winter wheat, spring wheat, peas, garbanzo beans, and canola. Prior to that, he worked at Northwest Farm Credit Services while also farming part time. Steve is an alum of Farm Foundation’s Young Farmer Accelerator Program.
In this episode, Steve talks about how gratifying it is to produce enough grain for 30 million loaves of bread on his farm, the hard work of trying to balance life with young kids and farm life, and what the process was like to switch over to no-till.
Music: “Country Roads” by Sergii Pavkin from Pixabay
Reach us at communication@farmfoundation.org.
The post Farm Foundation’s Meet Your Farmer Podcast with Steve Kaufman appeared first on Farm Foundation.
Login