Prices fell to $17.30 by the following year, and
for producers, it’s been mostly misery ever since.
Nationwide, the number of dairy farms dropped
from 40,199 in 2017 to 37,468 in 2018. In
Wisconsin, a state that takes pride in its image as
“America’s Dairyland,” the toll has been particular
severe. Though California produces more milk,
Wisconsin has more dairy farms than any other
state. And more than 1,600 of those have gone
under in the past three years.
But there are reasons to believe the worst
might be over, said Jim Ostrom, a partner at
Milk Source, the company that owns Rosendale.
In November, milk prices in Wisconsin rose to
$22.40. Nationwide, they reached $21, finally
above the $18 price point that Stephenson cited
as a general benchmark for producers turning
a profit.
With dairy prices outside farmers’ control, they
have to focus on controlling costs. That’s where
technology comes in. A rotary milking parlor can
handle 10 cows a minute and can sense when
an udder is empty so cows aren’t overmilked,
which can harm their health. But a robotic
milking system can run more than $200,000.
“It can be very difficult for a smaller farm to
afford this technology because you need,
you know, a larger operation to spread
those expenses across,” said Liz Binversie, an
agriculture educator in Brown County for the
University of Wisconsin extension office. She said
she knows of one farm that went out of business
because it couldn’t find enough workers and
could not afford a robotic milking system.
Wisconsin leads the nation in farm bankruptcies
with 45 Chapter 12 filings from July 2018