Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be partly sunny with a high of 79. Sunrise is 6:24 and sunset is 7:22 for 12 hours 58 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 35.8 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1774, the First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia.
Jim Massey, writing at Farm Progress, reports that the number of Wisconsin dairy farms has dropped below 5,000:
The number of Wisconsin dairy herds slipped below 5,000 in August, just 3% of the number of dairy herds the state boasted at its peak nearly 100 years ago.
The official number, as compiled by the National Agricultural Statistics Service, was 4,991 licensed dairy herds in the Dairy State as of Aug. 1, down from 5,222 a year earlier. The state had 5,470 dairy herds back in 2024.
Dairy herd numbers have been on a downward trend since NASS recorded 167,000 dairy herds in the state in 1930.
1960: 95,000
1980: 44,000
2000: 19,232The steepest single-year decline occurred in 2019, when 818 farms stopped shipping milk.
While dairy farm numbers have fallen drastically in Wisconsin since the turn of the century, milk production has remained relatively stable over the past 25 years.
See Jim Massey, Wisconsin dairy farms drop below 5,000 for first time, Farm Progress, August 27, 2026.
These numbers suggest greater efficiency from a smaller number of farms but also a smaller number of independent family farms. (Whatever the proportion of independent family farms in the remaining total, the decline in the total number of farms has been so great that family farms must be fewer today than in 1980 or 2000.)
This decline affects the economic independence of southern Wisconsin family farms. The stress that these farms are experiencing from tariffs further threatens their future. See Tariffs Leave Farmers Paying More.
And so, and so, if a WISGOP candidate for state senate visits Whitewater and contends that he supports ‘agricultural viability,’ that candidate might want to look south-southeast to see that the agricultural viability of family farming is now threatened by Mar-a-Lago’s tariff-loving owner.
_____
Forthcoming topics (in no particular order): Development in Downtown Whitewater (Follow-Up), A New Ethics Ordinance, Polling Places in the City (Further Considerations), and Steps for a Public Interest Campaign.
Meanwhile, U.S. Mint produces $1 coin with Trump’s face: