Joy Powers: This is Swing State of the Union — a podcast all about Wisconsin and why it’s so important to U.S. politics. I'm Joy Powers.
Sam Woods: And I'm Sam Woods. Thank you so much for joining us. Nov. 3 is election day in Wisconsin. And as some voters head to the polls, food prices will be top of mind.
That’s especially true in agriculture-rich states like Wisconsin.
Powers: The second Trump Administration has had a huge impact on our nation’s food systems. Tariffs and international unrest have made every part of that system more expensive. Farms and food banks alike are struggling to survive, and the key piece of federal legislation that affects their work has continued to stall in Congress.
Woods: So in this episode of Swing State of the Union, we’re looking at our food systems, the financial realities facing farmers and what policies are shaping the future of “America’s Dairyland.”
Hunger Task Force loses major funding source from Trump cuts
Powers: There are people working in every corner of the warehouse at the Hunger Task Force in West Milwaukee — loading and hauling large crates of food. The Hunger Task Force is what’s known as a food bank. It distributes food throughout the region’s emergency food network.
Matt King: Hunger Task Force supports a network of food pantries, meal sites, shelters that are all set up as a safety net. When people have a crisis or an emergency and need support with food assistance, then the organizations are there to help them.
Powers: That’s Matt King, the CEO of the Task Force, guiding us through the maze that is the warehouse. There are thousands of boxes stacked on pallets — each holding the promise of fresh meals for Wisconsin families.
The space is set up to hold tens of millions of pounds of food, and much of it comes from farms right here in Wisconsin.
King: So here we have eggs from a local egg producer. There's fresh produce in here from local vegetable growers.
Woods: Although the food bank uses private donations for operation costs and some food purchases, the majority of its food comes from the government.
King: Over half of the food that is in this warehouse comes from a government commodity program, so there are several programs through the USDA that really provide the underpinning of the inventory of food banks and food pantries around the country.
Woods: That used to include a federal program called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement, or LFPA. It gave money to states to connect local farmers with food banks like the Hunger Task Force. Unlike many federal food programs, the LFPA focused on small-scale farmers — what we sometimes think of as “family farms.”
The USDA under the Trump administration abruptly halted the program in March of 2025, leaving many local growers at a loss.
King: Producers were frustrated, because they had seen the success of the program. They had been able to make investments into infrastructure and staffing. And cooperatives had formed to have transportation to bring the products from the farms to the markets. And then, the funding was really unceremoniously and suddenly cut. And so, there was a lot of frustration amongst producers that the rug had been pulled out from underneath them when they had been told that the funding would continue.
One immigrant farmer's story
Powers: That included producers like Pa Thao — a farmer near Eau Claire, Wisconsin in Chippewa County. That’s about four hours from the Hunger Task Force in Milwaukee. As Pa says, she grew up on that farm. But she spent the first 12 years of her life moving between different refugee camps for Hmong families.
Pa Thao: My childhood was a blur, you know — being in a refugee camp and kind of like moving around, not really understanding what's going on. I think my most vivid memory was of leaving the camps and then arriving to the Chippewa Valley Airport in the middle of December, when it's like really, really cold and snows are like 12 feet high, it looks like. That was, you know, piled up on the on the tarmac.
Powers: The landscape was unfamiliar, and so was the food. But Pa’s mother, Maiv, saw an opportunity and got to work.
Thao: The only way that we could have produce and fresh fruits and vegetables that we were familiar with was for us to grow our own. And so, she started doing that for her kids and for her family. And that turned into farming for a farmer's market.
Powers: Wisconsin has many Hmong farmers. Many of them resettled in Wisconsin after fleeing persecution at the end of the Vietnam War.
Thao: For Pa’s family, the farm meant stability, and a way to get familiar food in an unfamiliar place — food like bitter melon, along with vegetables like peppers and carrots that are more common to non-Hmong consumers.
Woods: It quickly evolved from a small plot for their family into the 10 acres that Pa continues to farm on today. She says she owes it all to her mom.
Thao: She didn't do any of what she did for herself. It was always working for her children, and so we are the direct product of her hard work. And the farm is a product of that dream of hers.
Woods: It’s a classic American story: an immigrant family builds a new life in a new land and passes it down to the next generation.
But these days, the reality of maintaining that dream is complicated. Pa has what she calls a “9-to-5” job. That’s on top of all the time she spends planting, harvesting and selling her produce — and the time she spends raising her five kids.
LFPA cuts impact small farmers
The sudden loss of the LFPA, the federal program that paid small farmers to supply food banks like the Hunger Task Force, has made this year even more difficult. In total, Wisconsin farmers lost out on $2 million dollars a year when the program ended.
Thao: We were already into our popping and planning stage for this year, right? And so, thinking about how much we're going to produce for the program, how much land we're going to dedicate to that, and even like the type of products we were going to grow was really dependent on it.
Powers: Farmers are used to sudden changes. A bad storm can upend months of work, and shifting global markets can be devastating. These programs are meant to give family farmers like Pa some stability in a world of uncertainty.
That’s part of why there are so many government programs that fund farms in the U.S.: they make the food our communities depend on. And even with the globalization of the food industry, their survival is our survival.
According to the state’s Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection, nearly 10% of jobs in Wisconsin come from agriculture.
Today, agriculture is one of the most government-subsidized industries in the nation. So, how did we get here?
The Farm Bill, a history
Powers: The Local Food Purchasing Program is just one of the ways the federal government intervenes to help farmers.
To understand the policies governing farmers today, we have to look at the federal Farm Bill.
Adam Sheingate: It's a piece of legislation that truly affects every American. Whether you're benefiting from nutrition programs or just because we all eat, we’re all affected by the farm bill.
Woods: That’s Adam Sheingate, a Wisconsin-native who wrote a book on the history of farm policy. His book, The Rise of the Agricultural Welfare State, looks at how farming became one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the U.S., starting 100 years ago.
Sheingate: Really, the discussion around farm programs begins in the 1920s, which is a period when farmers are really struggling. And then as we get into the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, these are years of real hardship in rural areas, low prices, the sort of disaster of the Dust Bowl. And so we start, in the 1930s, providing supports to farmers that usually took the form of the government agreeing to purchase commodities from farmers in order to prop up prices. And then over the ensuing decades, those programs evolved into a different set of mechanisms to support farm incomes.
Agriculture policy today
Woods: Fast-forward to today.
Sheingate: We actually support farmers through a combination of mechanisms — some payments that are paid directly to farmers, emergency payments that are intended to cover losses from things like the trade war with China. But also, we have an extensive system of crop insurance where we subsidize the purchase of insurance policies that cover crop losses and income losses.
Woods: According to the USDA, these subsidies are expected to cost $47 billion in 2026. And that's $20 billion more than last year. But the distribution of that funding is uneven among different types of farms and farmers — with large farms being the biggest beneficiaries.
Sheingate: The programs are mostly focused on what we call “row crops.” That's corn, soybeans, cotton, rice, and wheat. And so, farmers who grow those commodities are the ones who are getting the bulk of government support. Although, through things like crop insurance, there are now crop insurance products that allow farmers to insure other types of products. And then of course, important for Wisconsin, there are also programs that support the price of dairy.
Woods: What that funding looks like and where it goes is spelled out in what we call “the Farm Bill.” But that name is a bit of a misnomer.
Sheingate: That's true. It probably should be called “the food bill,” or “the farm and food bill,” because it covers both farm programs and nutrition programs. The largest of those programs is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, but it also includes things like the Program for Women, Infants and Children, which is a program for pregnant mothers and mothers of young children. It also includes school lunch programs and other things.
A bargain is struck
Woods: For decades, Republicans and Democrats have been able to pass the Farm Bill because both parties got something they wanted from it.
Sheingate: The bargain that was struck in the 1970s that carried through the 1980s, 1990s, and most of the 2000s was that, by packaging farm subsidies together with nutrition programs, you can build a majority coalition in Congress. Democrats were more supportive of SNAP than Republicans. Republicans generally are representing more rural areas, so the farm programs may be a little bit more important to those constituents. But this was what we call a “log roll”: “I'll support your element of the bill if you support my element of the bill.” As we get through into the 2000s, conservative Republicans become less and less willing to support the nutrition elements of the bill, because of a perception that there's rampant fraud, waste, and abuse in SNAP, that SNAP beneficiaries don't deserve those benefits. And they began proposing more additional paperwork, additional verification that Democrats opposed because it would have the effect of making it harder for folks to qualify for those programs.
A bargain is severed
Powers: The Farm Bill is meant to be passed roughly every five years. But that hasn’t happened. The last Farm Bill was passed in 2018. Since then, Congress has been unable to come together and agree on what should be in it.
So, the 2018 Farm Bill has been extended every year since it expired in 2023 — stagnating funding levels and leaving farmers with only a one-year plan to make economic decisions.
That debate has become even more complicated over the past year because of a signature bill for the Trump Administration: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The reconciliation bill made sweeping changes to federal programs, including SNAP.
Sheingate: For the last 50 years or so, the farm bill has combined the farm programs and nutrition programs. That link was severed in the reconciliation bill that was passed in 2025, because the reconciliation bill included most of the agricultural subsidy programs, as well as changes to SNAP that will require additional paperwork, as well as rules that will have the effect of either reducing the number of people on SNAP or pushing more of the cost of SNAP onto states.
Woods: While this disagreement didn’t start with the Trump Administration, the changes included in that Big Beautiful Bill have made it seemingly impossible for Republicans and Democrats to come to a consensus on what should be in the Farm Bill.
Republicans were able to pass the Big Beautiful Bill without any Democratic votes. But as it stands right now, the Farm Bill needs bipartisan support to pass.
Sheingate: Congress is currently trying to pass the remaining pieces of farm legislation. But because that bargain has been severed, it's going to be very difficult to get that legislation passed.
Woods: Congress tried to pass a new Farm Bill this summer, but that effort has stalled indefinitely.
Powers: As politicians quibble over what should be in the bill, the absence of a new one is affecting farmers and food banks alike.
Hunger Task Force feels impacts from SNAP cuts
Powers: The Hunger Task Force has seen the impact on both sides: the farmers who lost income they were planning for, and people whose SNAP benefits have been rolled back. We won’t get into it today, but the SNAP changes have had a huge impact in Wisconsin and other states.
Matt King says people whose benefits have been cut — and people just struggling to make ends meet — show up to the food pantries that Hunger Task Force supplies.
King: Prices have gone up all around us, and meanwhile, the funding levels for those programs have remained the same. Wages that working families are receiving have not been able to keep up. So that's what we're seeing is more and more people coming to seek food assistance — in particular, young families who are feeling the strain and then also older adults who are on a fixed income, and meanwhile, the cost of everything around them has gone up.
Powers: We'll talk more about how the cost of living is affecting people’s access to food and other essentials in a future episode.
Wisconsin responds with 'Connecting Farms to Families' program
Woods: While Congress has failed to pass a new Farm Bill, the federal government has also cut programs like the Local Food Purchasing program. But the state of Wisconsin has stepped up to help small, local farmers like Pa Thao, with a new initiative called “Connecting Farms to Families.”
The program is funded by the state Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. After a lot of confusion, frustration and work, food is once again flowing from Wisconsin farms to the Hunger Task Force.
Powers: Back in the Task Force’s food warehouse the freezer is a balmy negative three degrees, but it holds the food bank’s crown jewels.
King: There's a number of different products in here, but a lot of proteins — which are really the most-needed item at many food pantries around the state. And so, we've been able to work with a lot of cooperatives and bring in high-quality beef, chicken, pork products from around the state.
Powers: This program costs the state of Wisconsin $5 million per year, a financial burden that’s been passed from the federal government to the state.
It pays farmers to help feed their community. For Pa, that’s what it’s all about.
Thao: Our goal of the farm has always been to build community with the land and with the people around us. And so, being able to continue working with a program that allowed us to really expand our reach to pantries across Wisconsin, that felt really good for us. Knowing that like our bell peppers, our carrots, our beans and peas are like really reaching families where they need them most, I don't think that there's a feeling, that there's a word that can describe that in a feeling.
Woods: We’ll take a short break, then explore the complicated web of who has power over Wisconsin’s food system, and the power to decide which farms succeed and which ones fail.
The hidden costs of farming
Darin Von Ruden was born to be a farmer.
Darin Von Ruden: Mom and Dad put me on the bus kicking and screaming at five years of age, because I really wanted to stay home and work with the animals and work with the crops and drive tractor.
Powers: Just after graduating high school, he went into business with his dad, taking over the dairy farm in southwest Wisconsin that had been in his family for generations. But he quickly learned that there were a lot of things that impact farmers that they couldn’t control.
Von Ruden: The 1980s farm crisis was ... We were kind of getting towards the tail end of that, but milk prices took a big drop in 1989, and I took over the farm in the fall of 1992. Received a void milk check because we didn't have enough to pay all of the assignments that were on the milk check, and we still had the feed mill to pay, the vet to pay, 3 or 4 other bills that you had to pay, but had no money left. That really made you rethink what's going on and how to work with things and became more involved in politics.
Powers: Today, Von Ruden is the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, an organization made up of farmers throughout the state.
The group advocates for policies and reforms aimed at bettering the lives of Wisconsin farmers — and evening the playing field between producers like Von Ruden and the market forces that set prices.
How market forces impact the price of produce
Woods: Contrary to what many believe, farmers like Von Ruden don’t have much power over how much they can sell their goods for on the market.
Prices for crops, livestock and animal products like milk or eggs are generally set by the global marketplace, far beyond Von Ruden’s farm in Southwest Wisconsin.
That price is determined by a wide array of factors, but it doesn’t always take into account how much farmers are paying on the front-end for feed, fertilizer or other expenses that pop up.
Von Ruden: I think the biggest thing is all of the expenses that dairy farmers incur on a regular basis, that is not really understood by the general public, especially when they see the milk shelves are full most of the time, dairy products are full. There's usually plenty of ice cream to eat, so they just don't understand that real cost of what that product is.
Woods: Commercial farmers sell wholesale to processors and packers who set their own prices. And as these companies have consolidated, there’s less competition — giving the companies that remain greater power over how much they pay farmers.
Tariffs and Wisconsin farmers
Powers: There’s also the issue of tariffs. Adam Sheingate, author and political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, explains why the nation’s shifting tariffs have been especially difficult for farmers.
Sheingate: One could make the argument that that agriculture is the most negatively affected sector from tariffs for two reasons. One is that tariffs make everything more expensive. But then farmers are also feeling the brunt of retaliations against US tariff policy — particularly soybean farmers, because China is the largest purchaser of US soybeans. And Chinese purchases of soybeans have plummeted.
Powers: Wisconsin is home to 16,000 soybean farmers, according to the 2022 USDA Census.
Tariffs have been a key part of the second Trump Administration’s approach to international relations. In some cases, these tariffs have sparked trade wars, with tariffs rising to more than 100% of the goods’ value. Alongside the gridlock over the Farm Bill and cuts to programs that support farmers, these unpredictable tariffs have added even more uncertainty.
Von Ruden says the impact has been devastating for Wisconsin farmers who rely on international markets to sell their products and buy their equipment.
Von Ruden: Day to day, you know, really, it impacts everything that we do, and not in a positive direction either. When there's tariffs, when we're putting tariffs on those products coming into this country, it generally costs the farmer more for their everyday costs. And then, when you turn around and look at other countries putting tariffs on the products that we export, those products might not get sold over there.
So then, you have that product staying here in the country, which pushes on the supply side, which means you're going to have an oversupply, which pushes the price for farmers down, meaning that we're paying more for our inputs and receiving less for the products that we put out our back doors, which is not a good scenario.
Powers: Aside from the tariffs, the war with Iran has also caused fertilizer prices to skyrocket, alongside the price of diesel — both essential for commercial farmers.
Farm consolidation in Wisconsin
Woods: Then, there’s consolidation of the farms themselves. Sheingate says as small farms have become less financially viable, larger farms have expanded.
Sheingate: As we've lost farms, the ones that remain have gotten larger, so there's been a really important consolidation. As of the most recent agricultural census, which was completed in 2022, there were just a little over 58,000 farms in Wisconsin. 20 years before that, in the 2002 census, there were 77,000 farms.
Woods: That’s a drop of almost 20 thousand farms in 20 years here.
Von Ruden says Consolidation is one of the top policy issues for the Wisconsin Farmers Union, as laid out in its most recent policy guide. The organization views it as an existential threat to the state’s food system and the small farms that have traditionally held it together.
Von Ruden: Back when I took over in 1990, the average size of a Wisconsin farm was 50 cows. Today, we're pushing 280 cows for the average, so our 50-cow operation here is really on the small, small side compared to what the average is. We're seeing farms that have 20,000 to 30,000 cows now. There's owner operators that probably have close to a million cows throughout the country — many, many different, facilities in different states, trying to spread that risk out a little bit.
But, you know, ultimately, when we're thinking about what's good for the country, do we want to get so concentrated that we forget about what's actually safe for our food system? And certainly, the more diverse food system we have, the stronger we're going to be as a country. And we're really not heading that way right now with pretty much all of agriculture.
‘The big get bigger’
Powers: In 2019, during Donald Trump’s first presidency, his then-Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, landed in hot water for a statement he allegedly made at the World Dairy Expo in Madison.
Perdue was quoted as saying, “In America, the big get bigger, and small go out.” While Perdue has denied saying it, federal policies underscore the reality of that axiom.
Sheingate: The larger the farm is, the more money they're likely to get from the government. So, the bulk of money that is going to the farm sector is going to the largest farms, because it's linked to the amount that farmers produce. And the average amount could vary, from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the farm. And we might say that those farms are already very commercially successful, and we might have a discussion about whether we want to reallocate or reorient our spending on agriculture to other things.
Powers: For its part, the Wisconsin Farmers Union has lobbied the state and federal governments to focus more programs on helping small-scale farmers.
During his time as a dairy farmer, Darin Von Ruden has seen firsthand what’s happened to small farms in Wisconsin — and the impact it has on the community.
Von Ruden: Capitalism is something that we have to deal with, but certainly looking at how it's really destroying this country too, because if you're not the biggest, you don't get to survive in this world the way it seems, or in this country, you know. And it's a real struggle for family farms to want to pass it down too, you know.
Woods: Although many of the programs for U.S. farmers are run by the federal government, state programs like “Connecting Farms to Families” are proof that Wisconsin policymakers can also help farmers.
With election day coming up, and federal policy favoring big farms, the state could take more of an active role in helping small farms, or not.
David Crowley vs. Tom Tiffany on agricultural policy
Powers: So where do the candidates stand?
In Wisconsin, the race for governor is between Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany.
Although Crowley was born and raised in the City of Milwaukee, as Milwaukee County Executive, he says on his campaign website that he’s, “governed at the intersection of Wisconsin’s urban and agricultural communities.”
He’s stated that as governor, he’ll invest in local and regional food systems, as well as cost-sharing programs to help farmers. And after the Trump Administration attempted to pause FoodShare benefits in Wisconsin last year, Crowley spoke out against it.
David Crowley: Here in Wisconsin, about 700,000 people rely on FoodShare every month. That's roughly 11% of our state's population. It's one of those crisis that isn't just an urban issue or a rural issue. It's an issue for every household in the state that relies on those resources to put food on the table.
Woods: Tiffany grew up on a dairy farm in Western Wisconsin. His campaign materials heavily feature photos of pastoral landscapes with crops and livestock. He’s even used cows in his ads.
Tom Tiffany: I'm Tom Tiffany. I grew up on a dairy farm milking cows just like this one. Madison politicians, they've been milking you for every dollar. And now, the cost of living? It's “utterly” ridiculous.
Woods: Tiffany has talked about the need to protect farmland from solar power developments and data centers. He also says he wants to expand access to locally grown food for Wisconsin communities.
But as a Congressman, Tiffany voted in favor of the Big Beautiful Bill — which pulled funds from SNAP and didn’t provide funding for things like the Local Food Purchasing Program. During his time in Congress, a new Farm Bill has never successfully passed.
Van Orden vs. Cooke on agricultural policy
Powers: Who gets power in Congress is also up for grabs in November.
In Wisconsin, all eight U.S. House Districts are on the ballot. The most competitive is the Third District in western Wisconsin, where farmers Pa Thao and Darin Von Ruden live.
Woods: Incumbent Republican U.S. Representative Derrick Van Orden is running for reelection. During his time in Congress, the Farm Bill has been gridlocked. Van Orden also voted in favor of the Big Beautiful Bill. And as the sole Wisconsin member of the House Committee on Agriculture, he voted against restoring funding to SNAP and against increasing some direct aid to farmers.
Powers: Van Orden's Democratic challenger is Rebecca Cooke. She grew up on a dairy farm in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and has made agricultural reforms a key part of her campaign. Among other things, she supports enforcing antitrust laws that address consolidation in the industry and increasing tax subsidies for small and mid-size farms.
The future of farming in Wisconsin
Woods: In America’s Dairyland, the future of agriculture policy isn’t just about the survival of small farms. It’s about the survival of Wisconsin communities and culture.
Wisconsin Farm Union President Darin Von Ruden is still betting on a bright future for his family farm, where his son is now following in his footsteps. But he wants to see a future where it’s possible for more small farms to thrive.
Von Ruden: So how do we change that mentality, other than making sure that there's programs that are going to be able to support those beginning farmers, making sure that they can get into the process? And that means every farmer too, not just the generational farmers, you know. We've got a lot of people that are living in the cities right now that want to farm, but economically just cannot get into the business like it was 20, 30, 40 years ago. And, you know, certainly our farm is one of those — you might call it — “special” ones, because the fourth generation is now on the farm and doing okay. But why can't we see that in all types of agriculture?
Next time on ‘Swing State of the Union’
Powers: Next episode, we’ll explore how Wisconsin funds its schools, and why so many districts are going to referendum.
Katherine Kokal: The state legislature basically can choose whether to add more state aid to that funding formula, and they haven't.
Woods: Education, property taxes and pie. Next time on Swing State of the Union. I’m Sam Woods.
Powers: And I’m Joy Powers. Swing State of the Union is produced by WUWM, Milwaukee’s NPR — a part of the NPR Network. Please subscribe to the Swing State of the Union podcast on the NPR app, or wherever you like to listen.
