Immigration vital to Wisconsin agriculture, farmers tell Baldwin

Immigration reform must ensure a supply of farm workers from other countries to help sustain Wisconsin agriculture, several farmers and ag representatives told U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Friday in La Crosse.

Immigration and reforming crop subsidies in the federal farm bill dominated discussion during a roundtable that the Wisconsin Democrat convened at Dairyland Power Cooperative.

Baldwin’s session with nearly 20 farmers, educators and officials in the ag industry came as a congressional conference committee wrestles with a new five-year farm bill. Negotiators are snagged over the House version, which would cut $40 billion from food stamps over 10 years, and restructuring subsidies.

“Sixty percent of the milk in Wisconsin is harvested by immigrants,” said John Rosenow, a Buffalo County dairy farmer with 500 cows.

Rosenow told of a Minnesota customer whose Community Supported Agriculture enterprise had 30 workers, several of whom were deported after an immigration audit deemed them illegal.

“People who had been working for him for 12 years he had to let go,” Rosenow said. “It almost killed his farm.”

Rosenow, who said eight of his 20 employees are from Mexico, said that, at a time when farm labor is in short supply, “We found this great source of workers in Mexican immigrants.”

Beyond the economic issue of providing farm workers is the moral aspect that it also benefits the immigrants, he said.

He recently visited families of some of his workers in Mexico, where he said a building boom “is the direct result of their jobs here.”

“These are people,” he said. “They are not illegal aliens. … You need to get to know them as people.”

John Jones, who farms 900 acres with 100 cows near Bangor, said immigrants really want to work, while many Americans eschew hard labor.

“We need the immigrants if you don’t want a lot of people to go hungry.”

Agriculture faces a dearth of workers in coming years, said Michael Compton, who directs the School of Agriculture at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville.

We're going to have 130,000 vacancies in the agricultural work force,” he said. “We need to be able to recruit and retain students in agriculture.”

Jake Wedeberg, a 28-year-old organic farmer near Gays Mills, said farming offers opportunities to young people like him, and the farm bill should ensure that lifestyle.

“We market through Organic Valley, and we want a stable pay price to keep the organic seal strong,” Wedeberg said.

Jerry McGeorge, cooperative affairs vice president for the La Farge-based Organic Valley, said exports are increasingly important to Organic Valley and its 1,834 members.

But South Korea is threatening to bar any U.S. organic products, which it also attempted a few years ago but was thwarted.

“Now, it’s trying it again,” McGeorge said in urging Baldwin to work against the ban.

Keith Wilson, a Cuba City farmer and an Organic Valley board member, said, “In the farm bill, we’re very concerned about huge subsidies for large farms. It really distorts the picture for family farms.”

During an interview after the roundtable, Wilson said, “I would really like to see a cap put on subsidies, especially to the large, wealthy farmers who don’t need it.”

Subsidies often make large farms larger, benefiting investors and groups at the expense of family farms, he said.

“They are making millions from subsidies and then morally how do they get rid of food stamps?” Wilson said.

Baldwin said she hopes the conference committee has something to present on the farm bill to the Senate next week if there is to be any hope of passing it before Jan. 1.

Conference leaders expressed confidence this week that they might reach a deal in time to avert the expiration of dairy subsides Jan. 1.

Baldwin decried the House version’s slashing of food stamps, now called SNAP for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

SNAP is important not only for the estimated 3.8 million people who would lose food stamps but also for farmers, Baldwin said.

“There is a reason nutrition and agriculture are linked in the farm bill,” she said. “Farmers realize the connection between hunger and nutrition.”