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On today’s show we focus on immigrant dairy farm workers in Wisconsin. Hosts Bert Zipperer and Pete Hardin are joined by three guests: Ruth Conniff, Armando Ibarra, and John Rosenow. They discuss the humanity of immigrant farmworkers, their struggles and their dreams, their kids who attend local K-12 schools, and their families in Mexico who depend on remittances. Conniff and Rosenow are part of a group called Puentes Bridges, which organizes trips to rural Mexico to connect rural farmers across international borders. Their most recent trip to Mexico is featured in the Wisconsin Examiner. 

Conniff explains how two groups of rural farmers–in the US and in Mexico–came together over the last few decades. In the 1990s, NAFTA accelerated a trend in American agriculture called “get big or get out.” In order to keep up, US farmers needed more employees and they found Mexican farmers were eager for jobs. Rosenow was one of the first farmers in the US to hire Mexican workers in 1998. Now, Rosenow employs 18 people–13 of whom are immigrants. These workers milk 600 cows 24-hours a day.

The mass migration of farmworkers means that now in Wisconsin, roughly 70% of the labor force on dairy farms is made up of workers of Latinx descent. The majority of those workers are also unauthorized, as of a 2023 report done by Ibarra and the School for Workers. Ibarra says it’s crucial to understand the circumstances driving these demographic shifts, shifts that include the growth of Latinx populations in rural areas across Wisconsin. Hardin reiterates that the nation’s economy–and food and agriculture sector—would collapse if the immigrant workforce is deported.

Ruth Conniff is Editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner. She is the author of “Milked: How an American Crisis Brought Together Midwestern Dairy Farmers and Mexican Workers” which won the 2022 Studs and Ida Terkel award from The New Press.

Armando Ibarra is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the School for Workers. His research and fields of specialization are Political Economy, working communities of Latin American descent in the U.S., social movements, community development, international labor migration, community-based participatory applied, and action research.

John Rosenow is a family farm own in Buffalo County, Wisconsin. He’s a fifth generation farmer and he and his wife, Nettie, also own a compost company called Cowsmo.

Featured image of a Wisconsin dairy farm in winter via the Library of Congress.

The post Roundtable on Immigrant Dairy Workers in Wisconsin appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.