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Series note
A new set of challenges is dramatically
changing dairy farming in Wisconsin. Fewer traditional family dairy
farms dot the landscape. Much larger, factory-style farms are on the
rise. In a five-day series, The Post-Crescent explores how the changes
are affecting the state’s signature industry and the people who drive
it.
Sunday: Dairy’s landscape shifting
Monday: Growth crowds out farms
Tuesday: Mega-farms emerge
Wednesday: Health care concerns
Thursday: Planning for the future
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Posted August 27, 2006
To farm or to sell? Wisconsin agriculture in land use quandary
By Susan Squires
Post-Crescent staff writer
Joe Brantmeier’s grandparents began farming 80 acres near Sherwood in 1920. Today, the village surrounds the farm.
A
subdivision, golf course and commercial district ring the Brantmeier
farm, separating the original 80 acres from another 320 acres the
family owns.
“The problem with it is our main facility where we
do the milking and where most of the livestock are located and where we
have to bring the feed are right in the village. Everything has to come
down the hill from the south,” said Brantmeier, explaining the need for
navigating bulky, slow-moving equipment in heavy traffic over State 55.
“I’m not sitting here trying to complain about it, but it does get burdensome.”
The
distinction between town and country has blurred in the Fox Valley, and
subdivisions and strip malls are crowding out farms and cows.
Between
1990 and 2002, a total of 8,702 acres of farmland in Calumet,
Outagamie, Waupaca and Winnebago counties became something else. That’s
a little more than 13 square miles, or an area about the size as Neenah
and Menasha combined.
“The 800-pound gorilla in everybody’s
living room right now is the issue of land use, farmland protection and
that if the dairy industry is going to not only continue and survive
but prosper here long-term, we need to get serious about ways to look
at protecting our agricultural lands,” says Greg Blonde, Waupaca County
University of Wisconsin-Extension agricultural agent.
Land use options Urban
sprawl is a double-edged sword for farmers. On one hand, a developer
will pay two or three times as much an acre as another farmer.
Putting
himself in a farmer’s shoes, Stan Gruszynski, project co-chairman of
Future of Farming and Rural Life, Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts
and Letters, said, “I can sell this land for hundreds of thousands of
dollars versus trying to eke out a living for the next generation in
dairying or otherwise on a small scale.”
On the other hand,
sprawl is an impediment for farmers on the fringe who want to remain
farmers. It also threatens an economic infrastructure that includes
implement dealers, veterinarians, plumbers, electricians, milk haulers,
processors and fertilizer dealers.
“There needs to be a
sufficient amount of work for those people to justify staying in the
area. If you don’t have that, crop production alone isn’t very
sustainable,” Calumet County farmer Kenn Buelow said.
Wisconsin
has had a farmland preservation program since 1977, but the tax credits
intended to discourage farmers from selling farmland to developers have
proven insufficient incentive. The average participant in Outagamie
County, for example, got $642 in 2002.
“This issue of land use
and agriculture lands preservation or protection is something we
haven’t been able to do a good job of here in Wisconsin, but yet if we
are going to be able to look at the dairy industry prospering
long-term, we’re going to start to have to deal with it sooner or
later,” Blonde said.
Programs fall short The
state’s Smart Growth law, which requires municipalities to have land
use plans in place by 2010, is unlikely to alleviate the fears of Anita
Zurbrugg, who is assistant director of the American Farmland Trust
Center for Agriculture in the Environment.
“Even if farmland is
theoretically protected through a legislated agricultural zoning
designation, it may be perceived by the general public, developers and
the landowner as ‘undeveloped land’ or vacant land just waiting around
for development, instead of working land that is dedicated and reserved
for a specific agricultural use,” she said.
The most
successful farmland preservation programs, Zurbrugg says, are a
combination of strict regulation and incentives like Purchase of
Development Rights programs popular in Maryland, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania.
Municipalities, usually, compensate farmers for
the difference between their property’s value as farmland and the price
a developer would pay. In exchange, landowners give up their right
forever to sell it for development.
In Wisconsin, the Town of
Dunn has purchased development rights to more than 2,660 acres through
a combination of property taxes, grants and borrowing.
The rest
of the state, however, is slow to acquire an appetite for PDRs. The
Washington County Board approved a purchase of development rights
program in March, only to rescind it in June amid controversy.
“They
don’t get passed for two reasons. The non-farmers don’t want to spend
$100 a year to preserve the rural environment, which makes their life
so much more delightful than living in downtown Milwaukee,” John Gehl,
a Germantown entrepreneur, said.
Gehl set up an experimental
farm on the urban fringe in the Waukesha County Town of Merton to see
whether a family farm can compete against a mega-farm — and cope with
urban sprawl. “The second thing is all the farmers say, ‘Well, you
can’t farm it anyway, so why do you want to pass a program like that?’”
In
addition to PDRs, a task force convened by the state Department of
Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection called the “Working Lands
Initiative” has recommended designating “working lands enterprise
areas.”
The state would try to preserve blocks of farmland by
offering the owners financial incentives and other perks. The task
force recommends using bonding, dedicated taxes and revolving loan
funds to pay for the programs.
Smaller might be better Jerry
Deschane, deputy executive vice president of the Wisconsin Builders
Association, thinks farmland preservation is pretty simple.
“Wisconsin
could save 3,000 acres of agricultural land every year if all we did
was increase density by 1 percent,” he said. “If we would just shave 20
percent of the amount of land we’re using, nobody would even notice and
we’d save 3,000 acres of land every year.”
The problem, he says,
is that local zoning ordinances haven’t kept pace with a housing market
that’s moving away from four bedrooms and toward smaller dwellings.
“What
needs to happen is planning commission members need to get off this
assumption people want huge back yards,” Deschane said.
“Some
people do, but an awful lot don’t. When it comes to land use and
farmland preservation we need to stop the us-versus-them fight. We
don’t have to choose between cows and condos. Houses and farms have
coexisted for literally millennia.”
Joe Brantmeier knows from
experience that houses and farms can co-exist. Customers from Frogg’s
Ice Cream Shop often linger by his fence, watching the cows. It seems
to him a lady complained about flies or something years ago, but other
than that he hasn’t had a run-in with a neighbor.
But he also
knows what his land is worth to a developer, compared with its value to
a farmer, especially since there’s nowhere contiguous to expand and
traffic on State 55 is only multiplying.
“We’re very aware we can’t stay there forever,” Brantmeier said.
Susan Squires can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 368, or at ssquires@postcrescent.com.
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