On today’s show, guest host Bert Zipperer speaks with dairy journalist Pete Hardin. They recap the big stories in the agricultural industry over 2025, in an extension of their coverage on their weekly feature on WORT, The Milkweed. 

Dairy and cheese production is quintessentially Wisconsin, since the time that settler farmers brought their herds to regenerate the land cleared of forests by an earlier generation of settlers. Hardin calls Wisconsin’s dairy industry the greatest non-extractive economic development of the state. Now, dairy is a $50-60 billion dollar industry, with celebrated small producers like Cedar Grove and large producers like BelGioioso. 

But the cheese market is terrible right now, says Hardin. Since 2024, prices have declined 30-35%. On top of declining gains for producers, immigrant farmworkers are being targeted by the Trump administration, despite the foundational role they play in the nation’s agricultural sector. The agricultural sector as a whole is struggling, from the ravages of the avian flu to the Trump administration’s tariffs that hit the soybean market hard. And then there are the lawsuits against Monsanto and Bayer, the producers of the carcinogenic herbicide called glyphosate or Roundup, that the Trump administration wants to overturn. In this market, Hardin says that he’s worried about hungry farmers and hungry consumers.

Featured image of the Old Country Cheese plant in Cashton, Wisconsin via Rawpixel. 

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