By Hope Kirwan
Leaders in Wisconsin agriculture are warning the state’s farmers to brace for another tough year for trade and market conditions.
The discussion at the annual Wisconsin Agricultural Outlook Forum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused both on the economic hardships weighing on farmers and what some producers are doing to try to get ahead.
Trade disputes and rapidly changing tariffs brought by President Donald Trump’s administration last year created tremendous uncertainty for agriculture, according to Steve Deller, a professor of ag economics at UW-Madison.
He said that has set farmers up for another difficult year.
“It’s undermining confidence in terms of prices for both exports and imported inputs,” Deller said at the forum. “We’re not sure what the prices are going to be because we don’t know what are the tariffs, and then how much of those tariffs are going to be passed down to the consumer, the farmer or the food processors.”
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