Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see scattered afternoon thunderstorms with a high of sixty-nine. Sunrise is 5:27 AM and sunset 8:15 PM, for 14h 47m 48s of daytime. The moon is full with 99.5% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the nine hundred twenty-second day.
On this day in 1863, a direct Union assault on Vicksburg, Mississippi begins:
For three days in May 1863, Union forces attempted to capture the city of Vicksburg to gain control of shipping on the Mississippi River. The troops climbed up steep ravines and crossed trenches to attack the fortifications above them. The 14th and 17th Wisconsin Infantry regiments participated in this unsuccessful assault. At the end of the day, the Union had lost nearly 1,000 soldiers without achieving its goal.
Recommended for reading in full:
Rick Barrett reports ‘Struggling to tread water’: Dairy farmers are caught in an economic system with no winning formula (‘Family farms are at the mercy of trade wars, economies of scale and a complex pricing system’):
The dairy crisis worsened last year when China and Mexico imposed steep tariffs on U.S. dairy products in retaliation for President Donald Trump slapping tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel.
Trump’s criticisms of Mexico, the largest foreign market for American dairy products, heightened trade tensions. When the president threatened to close the Mexican border, it alarmed former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, now president of the U.S. Dairy Export Council.
Closing the border would be a “gut punch” that could set the dairy industry back 20 years, Vilsack said.
More than one in seven days’ worth of U.S. milk ends up in products sold in foreign countries. Trade wars, and the failure of the United States, Mexico and Canada to ratify the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement — meant to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement — worries the industry.
“We shipped $1.4 billion in dairy products to Mexico last year, which accounts for more than one-fourth of U.S. dairy exports,” Vilsack said. “Without a trade treaty with Mexico in place, the dairy industry would be hard-pressed to maintain and expand these sales, as our competitors in Europe are expected to implement a lucrative trade deal with Mexico by next year.”
Wisconsin farmers have received more than $10 million in payments from a Trump program meant to help producers of milk, pork, soybeans, corn and other commodities who have seen prices tumble in trade disputes.
That’s about $725 for a 55-cow dairy which probably lost between $36,000 and $48,000 in income in 2018 from low milk prices, according to Wisconsin Farmers Union. A 290-cow dairy stood to receive $4,905 but would have lost several hundred thousand dollars in income.
The Mess family [of Watertown] said the payment they received didn’t even cover 10% of what they had to borrow to remain in business.
“We want trade, not aid,” Carrie Mess said.
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Wisconsin still has about 1.3 million cows spread across nearly 8,000 dairy farms, more than any other state. The dairy industry contributes $43.4 billion to Wisconsin’s economy each year, or more than $82,500 per minute.