WASHINGTON (SPECTRUM NEWS) — Wisconsin’s dairy industry has seen better days.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin says more than 2,000 farms have gone under since President Trump took office in 2016 and she believes his pandemic has devastated the industry even more.
“What we’re finding is particularly cheese processors whose customers are these large scale entities, their orders have disappeared — I mean, they just dropped,” said Sen. Baldwin. “And those cheese processors who are focused on the consumer market, they cant keep the stores filled because the demand has shifted from institutional settings to individual retail customers. So, it is chaotic right now and we have to recognize that.”
Baldwin says she’s working to make sure Wisconsin farmers are a top priority in the next round of COVID-19 federal aid.
Congress’s last bipartisan effort was the CARES Act — a stimulus bill worth $2 trillion.
As it relates to agriculture industries, the legislative package invested $14 billion in replenishing the USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation and sent an additional $9.5 billion to USDA Ag Secretary Sonny Purdue to provide financial support to farmers and ranchers impacted by coronavirus.
They can also apply for the Small Business Administration’s (SBA) loan and grant programs.
But Baldwin says those resources are usually meant to address payroll needs.
“Oftentimes in a farm setting it might be feed and it might be other overhead fixed costs and not so much payroll that is the big expense so the SBA program is not designed with farms in mind and we need to do better,” said Baldwin.
The senator is now putting a lens on Ag Sec. Purdue’s handling of this crisis.
She pressed him on announcing significant USDA purchases of dairy products among other issues.
“We [also] want to see him reopen the Dairy Margin Protection Program — which is an insurance program that helps dairy farmers when the price of milk drops below the costs of producing it,” said Baldwin. “And he didn’t give me any indication of doing that and that’s disappointing.”