During this week’s Farm Technology Days in Eau Claire, the Secretary-designee of the Wisconsin Department of Ag, Randy Romanski spoke about the challenges farmers faced this past year.
“It’s been a difficult year and actually it continues, the last four or five years have been difficult for Wisconsin farmers, probably farmers everywhere. But farmgate prices are not what we would have hoped leading up to this, weather has been unpredictable, we had trade disturbances for a while, and then of course last year we had COVID,” Romanski said. “This year started out okay, we got a little nip of frost, which was unfortunate, then, of course, it’s been dry. It’s not been as dry here as it’s been a little bit west of us, but there are still pockets of the state that are dry.”
Even though agriculture has faced some pretty rough times this year, Romanski explains that after the aid farmers received to get to this point, he’s optimistic about the future.
“You get revenue in the hands of farmers and they find a way to put it to good use. So, they invested, they made changes as they needed to, they kept themselves going as they were working their way through the pandemic. So, the optimism as we move forward is some of those things that I mentioned in the beginning, now we’ve got opportunities to build out of it,” he went on to say, “I mean, farmgate prices are trending in a positive direction, that’s a good thing. We are seeing international markets opening up again which is a good thing for Wisconsin, we grow, produce, process, such a wide variety of agricultural commodities, that’s a really good opportunity for Wisconsin businesses and farmers.”
He also brought up how broadband is one of the keys to success that we need in the industry. “It’s hand in hand and it’s part of infrastructure. The key thing about agriculture and infrastructure is it’s intertwined, you got to get a commodity out of the field into the marketplace wherever that market may be,” Romanski explained. “For broadband, this last year clearly showed that it’s not a nice to have, It’s a need to have. So, as farmers operating their businesses, people doing telehealth, kids learning remotely, I mean, you have to have good connectivity. Last year, there were historic investments in broadband, something that the governor and the legislature agreed to…And this year it’s going even further, they’re doubling down, but there’s so much need out there, we need to keep redoubling those efforts as time goes on.”
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