Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
rural villages' banding together, pooling resources, and buying family farms to keep
them operational. As a result, one recent report lauded Wisconsin for being number
oneindiversityofdairypractices.Recently,thenumbersofcowsinthestatehasalso
begun to rise.
Economists also say that California's cheese industry is dangerously tied to
the stock market, since many of its consumers are Double Income, No Kids
types—everytimethestockmarketshiccup,California'smarketsquake,butnotWis-
consin's.(Wisconsin'shavebeenaroundformorethanacentury.)Furthermore,Cali-
fornia is addicted to artificially low-priced milk, which means farmers work their
tails off for virtually nothing. California cheesemakers, also, are mostly huge factory
operations,asopposedtothesmallfamilyoperationsinWisconsin.Seventy-fiveper-
cent of Wisconsin cheesemakers grew up in an operation in which a grandparent had
worked in the industry; only 20 percent of California's cheesemakers can say that.
One thing Wisconsin will never have to worry about is water—a problem Cali-
fornia agriculture constantly has to face, and projections paint a fairly dire picture
for enormous farm operations in the Golden State. Additionally, Wisconsin farmers
havealotmorefreegrassforcows.Afterthemajornationwidedroughtof2012,feed
prices soared, killing many California farms.
Thus, it may not be able to compete in whole numbers, but on a per capita basis,
Wisconsin is still America's Dairyland.
By 1880, despite less-fecund land and a shorter growing season than other agricultural
states, Wisconsin ranked fourth in dairy production thanks to university efficiency, pro-
gressive quality control, Herculean effort in the fields, and the later organization of power-
ful trade exchanges. The southern half of the state, with its minerals in the southwest and
richloamysoilsinthesoutheast,attractedEuropeanagrariananddairyfarmingimmigrants
and speculators. “America's Dairyland” made it onto state license plates in the 1930s.
Wisconsinites have a rather fickle political history. Democrats held sway in the territorial
days; then, in 1854, the newly formed Republican Party took the reins. The two mono-
liths—challenged only occasionally by upstarts such as the Grangers, the Socialists (Mil-
waukee consistently voted for Socialist representatives), Populists, and the Temperance
movement—jockeyed for power until the end of the century.
