LTE – Jim Laskin – 9-23-2020
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Letter to the editor
When I was a kid, every Sunday our family would drive to my grandparents’ farm. We drove for about an hour through the Wisconsin countryside, past seemingly endless herds of cows all living on their own picture-perfect farms. After lunch we would wander around and visit the barn, the cows in the fields, maybe ride a horse or go down to the river and fish. That was Sunday from my birth until I left home, a very golden memory.
My grandparents’ farm is long gone, an early victim of the 1980s farming crisis brought on by misplaced federal policy. Again today, Wisconsin farms are in dire straits. Between early 2017 and now, Wisconsin lost almost 4000 farms. We lost 2351 dairy farms alone in that time frame. 10% of the dairy farms left in Wisconsin have closed in the last year.
These statistics are gathered by the national and Wisconsin departments of agriculture. Check them for yourself. But these aren’t just statistics of course, but people and families who make up the fiber of local communities and whose lives have gotten a lot harder during the last three and a half years.
The farm crisis of the 1980s was largely a product of bad federal policy and the current farm crisis is as well. Trade wars, often for no good reason, are mindlessly waged with no real thought as to their many very real costs and human consequences.
Jim Laskin
Glenwood City, WI