sir2n018 For Wisconsin's Dairy Farmers, Tariffs Couls Reshape The Race For The Senate : NPR
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For Wisconsin's Dairy Farmers, Tariffs Could
Reshape The Race For The Senate
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August 12, 2018 - 8:31AM ET
Heard on Weekend Edition Sunday
FEY ww carcia-navarno DENISE GUERRA
Vision Aire Farms is a crop and dairy farm in Eldorado, Wisc., co-owned by Travis and Janet Clark, Janet's brother David
Grade, and her parents Roger and Sandy Grade.
Cobuin Dukohar/ Wisconsin Cantor forlnvostgative Journalism
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Janet Clark hopes to keep her dairy farm in the family. She inherited Vision Aire
Farms from her parents, and now runs it with her younger brother.
The farm is idyllic, tucked away amid rolling green hills of corn and sunflower fields.
One side of the farm holds a line of calves. They are individually fed by Clark's children
and their cousins, playfully holding milk bottles for them to drink.
It's here where Clark and her family begin work each day at 5:30 a.m., doing chores
and milking cows. But times are tough. Milk prices have already fallen 4 percent this
year, continuing a steady decline since 2014, according to data from the Labor
Department. Meanwhile, net farm income, a broad measure of profits, is forecast to
drop this year to its lowest level since 2006, according to the Department of
Agriculture,
“It hits my bottom line," Clark says about falling milk prices. "The last two years have
been most challenging.”
Even tougher times might be ahead, she worries. Wisconsin is the number two dairy
supplier in the country. In an industry where margins can be razor thin, farmers like
Clark have come to rely on selling their milk products abroad, specifically Mexico,
which is one of the biggest importers of U.S. dairy.
When the Trump administration announced earlier this year that Mexico, Canada and
the European Union would face tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on
aluminum, Mexico responded by levying tariffs of up to 25 percent on U.S. dairy
products.
Clark says those tariffs threaten business relationships that farmers have spent years
cultivating.
"We have created relationships with the people that we're exporting with," Clark says.
"Now they're going to back off, and not buy from us. So that opens the door for other
people to create those relationships.”
The president's tariffs are a complicated subject for many farmers in Wisconsin. The
state's rural communities swung hard for Donald Trump in 2016, helping him become
tps ww npr org/20 18/08) 1216378400 O/or-isconsins-dair-farmers-tarifs-coulé-reshape-the-race-orine-senate anesvtanote For Wisconshs Day Farmer, Tarts Could Reshape Te Race For The Senate: NPR
the first Republican to win Wisconsin since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Clark says
shesupports the president, but admits she’s worried. The White House has proposed a
plan to spend $12 billion in emergency farm aid, but says Clark, "I would rather have
trade than have aid.”
It’s a mantra echoed my many farmers in Wisconsin.
‘Travis Clark and Janet Clark are pictured with their three children, from left, Grace, 13, Eve, 10, and Levi 6, at Vision Aire
Farms,
Coburn Dukehar/ Wisconsin Genter for Invostgaive Journalism
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