From Dairy Pricing to Private Well Testing, Wisconsin Farmers, Lawmakers Have Eye on Next Farm Bill

Apr 20, 2023

By Hope Kirwan

The federal legislation is passed roughly every five years and funds a wide range of programs in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, from crop insurance to grants for rural communities to federal food assistance. The last version, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, was enacted in December 2018 and extends through fiscal year 2023.

Tyler Wenzlaff, director of national affairs for the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation, said his organization's top priority is returning the formula for pricing milk to what it was before the last farm bill.

The price of milk sold for beverages, called Class I, is based on the advance prices for cheese, which is Class III, or butter and dry milk powder, called Class IV. The old formula took whichever price class was higher, but the 2018 farm bill changed the formula to average the two prices together as a way to help the milk industry improve their risk management strategies.

Wenzlaff said the two price classes typically mirror each other when increasing or declining. But federal food programs during the COVID-19 pandemic, like the Farmers to Families Food Boxes, pushed the price of cheese much higher, which ultimately caused farmers to lose money from their milk checks rather than receiving their usual premium for milk.

"You have this whole pricing system that is very convoluted, very complicated. And all sudden, you have some government intervention and it moves prices that traditionally don't move in two directions and they're going all out of whack," Wenzlaff said. "One of the things that we're looking for is greater transparency in the system."

He said the Farm Bureau is hoping to see a bigger overhaul of the federal milk marketing order system through the USDA. But the group is hoping lawmakers will at least put the old pricing formula back in place while the industry works with federal officials on a new way forward.

Wisconsin Farmers Union president Darin Von Ruden said his group is also pushing for bigger changes for the dairy industry in the next farm bill, including a more farm-friendly pricing structure. But he said the dairy industry also has to address the decades-long problem of having an oversupply of milk.

"We can't continue down this road of status quo because it's just meaning fewer and fewer farmers, which means that our diversity of production is really disappearing," he said. "Ultimately, I think that's going to affect how consumers feel about the products that we produce, plus probably having an inadequate supply at some point."

Von Ruden said increasing funding for conservation programs is one of the Farmers Union's top priorities in the next farm bill.

"For every three farmers that apply for funding for conservation programs, only one farmer is actually getting dollars," he said. "So there's a real shortage on that side of the farm bill's structure."

Leaders of both of the House and Senate Agriculture committees have expressed a need for additional funding for farm bill programs. A letter by Senate ag leaders said improving safety nets for food and farm programs would help the USDA move away from one-time payments when something goes wrong, like those seen after retaliatory tariffs from China and other trading partners or during the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter reported the federal government has approved more than $90 billion in ad hoc assistance for farmers since 2018.

Wenzlaff said his group is just hoping to maintain current funding levels, but new funding could mean more agricultural research and expanded conservation practices. He said farmers don't want to be reliant on government support, but there are times when one-time payments are needed to help producers get through a disaster.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”