Photo courtesy Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW)

Over the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of standing with people in western Wisconsin who are fighting for the health and wellbeing of our communities. Hundreds of people have turned out at community meetings, rallies and local government meetings to voice their opposition to the proposed expansion of one of the largest factory farms in the region. 

In May, 100 people showed up to get organized in support of a legal challenge against Ridge Breeze Dairy’s permit to spread 80 million gallons of manure across western Wisconsin. Another 100 people showed up in the town of Maiden Rock to support the passage of an operations ordinance aimed at protecting local health and property values. Over 400 people registered for a DNR public hearing last year to show their opposition to the expansion.

These actions represent a growing unity and commitment to safeguarding clean water, clean air and the small farms that are threatened by Breeze’s expansion. That kind of unity drives action. It inspired the Maiden Rock town board’s unanimous vote to pass its operations ordinance in December 2024. And it’s inspired many more towns that have started studying and drafting ordinances of their own. 

For the last two years, Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW) has played a key role in bringing together ordinary people and small farmers to pass local ordinances to protect our homes. People across the region are holding strong as corporate mega-dairies try to take over our agricultural landscape. 

But powerful special interests are trying to prevent local leaders from taking action to protect our communities. Venture Dairy, a lobbying group representing industrial dairy interests, strongly supports Ridge Breeze Dairy’s $35 million plan to expand from 1,700 to 6,500 cows and has attempted to intimidate towns and counties looking to protect their land, water and roads from the impacts of industrial agriculture. 

In 2020, for instance, leaders at Venture Dairy falsely told Polk County supervisors that they would be committing a felony if they voted for a moratorium on factory farm expansions. The Wisconsin Counties Association’s general counsel wrote a letter publicly refuting this ridiculous claim. More recently, officials in towns like Pepin, Gilman and Rock Elm have been subjected to similar intimidation tactics and disinformation regarding the regulation of industrial dairy farms.

The truth is that, thanks to the efforts of industry lobbyists whittling down and undermining state rules and enforcement, oversight of large-scale livestock operations in Wisconsin has been stretched thin. With more than 330 factory farms across Wisconsin, our communities have largely been left to fill the gap. 

But that’s still too much for Venture Dairy. They were recently behind a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s authority to protect water quality. If they had gotten their way, there would be no DNR regulations for hundreds of factory farms across the state. Last month, that lawsuit was rejected unanimously by an appeals court.

Venture Dairy’s founding members include Todd Tuls, former owner of the Emerald Sky Dairy in St Croix County. In Emerald, the town well – only half-a-mile away from the facility – has nitrate levels that have reached as high as six times the Safe Drinking Water standards. Emerald Sky had a 300,000-gallon manure spill in 2016 that went unreported for months before a neighbor notified the state. Emerald Sky has since been sold to Breeze Dairy Group, owners of Ridge Breeze Dairy in Pierce County. 

Despite these challenges, people in western Wisconsin are making real progress. In the face of industry opposition, we are successfully organizing to fight the corporate consolidation of the agriculture industry. Our community organizing resulted in the DNR recently removing 2,000 acres from Ridge Breeze’s manure spreading plan due to risks to groundwater and surface water that we identified. If not for our comments provided in the public hearing process, those acres very likely would have been rubber stamped. Last year, we identified hundreds of acres of land that had been listed on Ridge Breeze’s plan for manure spreading without permission from landowners. Due to our organizing and public pressure at a public hearing, we were able to get that land removed and require Ridge Breeze to submit affidavits attesting to the fact that they have permission to spread on the land listed on their plan. Unfortunately, these affidavits have not worked, and people have continued to come forward to remove their land. 

Recognizing the holes in state regulations, we organized to pass local ordinances like the operations ordinance in the town of Maiden Rock, which was passed last year and protects the town residents from the risks of factory farms. That organizing is now reverberating through the region, with people in western Wisconsin and beyond going to town board meetings with their neighbors to create the change they need to protect their homes. Just this week, 75 neighbors gathered in the town of Isabelle for a public hearing on an operations ordinance drafted by their town board. Those neighbors were united in their support for clean water, clean air and local control.

Regular people have decided the future of rural Wisconsin is worth fighting for, but the only way to change the path we’re on is to get organized. It’s time to join together with your neighbors who share your vision for your community and make a plan to bring change. The future of our rural communities depends on it.