Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Within ahalfdecade, thestate hadnearly 50factories, andinsomespotsthedemand
for milk outstripped the supply.
Immigrants followed,findingthetopographyreminiscent ofhomeandtheglacial
till profoundly fecund (one spot of Dane County has been termed the world's richest
agrarian soil).
Old World pride mixed with Yankee ingenuity created an explosion of Wisconsin
dairying. The first dairy organizations were founded after the Civil War; a dairy
board of trade was set up in Watertown in 1872. The state's dairies shrewdly diversi-
fied the cheesemaking and took the Western markets by storm. By the 20th century,
a stereotype was born: Jefferson County, Wisconsin, was home to 40,000 cows and
34,000 people.
W. D. HOARD
A seminal figure in Wisconsin's rise to dairy prominence was theretofore unknown
W. D. Hoard. In 1870, Hoard began publishing
The Jefferson County Union,
which
becamethemouthpieceforWisconsinfarmers.Theonlycentralsourcefordissemin-
ating information, the paper'sdairy columns transmogrified into
Hoard's Dairyman.
It was the most influential act in Wisconsin's dairy industry.
Hoard had never farmed, but he pushed tirelessly for previously unheard-of pro-
gressive farm techniques. Through Hoard, farmers learned to be less conservative,
to keep records, and to compare trends. Most significantly, Hoard almost singlehan-
dedly invented the specialized, milk-only cow. He became such a legend in the in-
dustry he was elected governor in 1889.
TheUniversityofWisconsinfollowedHoard'sleadandestablisheditsCollegeof
Agriculture's experimental stations in 1883. The renowned department would invent
the butterfat test, dairy courses, cold-curing processes, and winter feeding.
HOW YOU GONNA KEEP 'EM DOWN ON THE FARM?
DairyinginWisconsinisa$26.5billionindustry,accountingforatenthofthestate's
total economic output (and nearly half of all agricultural). It is more crucial to the
state's economy than citrus is to Florida ($9.3 billion) or potatoes are to Idaho.
Nearly three-tenths of all the butter and cheese in the United States is produced
in Wisconsin. It produces 2.3 billion pounds of milk per year on average; that's
