Eau Claire Leader-Telegram. March 6, 2024.

Editorial: Family farms remain critical for Wisconsin

There was a story Monday that we’d like to highlight. It was about Wayne Erickson and his family’s long connection to its farm.

The property and the Erickson family will be honored during this year’s Wisconsin State Fair as a century farm — a farm in a single family’s possession for at least 100 years. According to the Wisconsin State Farm Park, the generations involved in a century farm vary. It’s rarely less than three, but the average runs from that up to five generations.

Erickson doesn’t work the land anymore. He told the L-T the family sold the cows when he turned 60. But the family still has possession and rents out the 160 acres for farming.

Erickson’s land isn’t alone. If you ask the Wisconsin State Fair, which handles the awards, there are almost 10,000 such farms across the state. The program started in 1948, when some 808 farms were honored.

Fifty years later the fair began honoring sesquicentennial farms — those in the same family for at least 150 years. The toll the latter part of the 20th century took on family farms was clear. Only 237 farms were recognized during that first ceremony, 29.3% of the number of century farms in 1948.

It’s true that not all the farms that passed from family ownership in those five decades did so due to the challenges of the farm crisis or other economic shifts. Some family lines likely ended. Others probably didn’t have heirs whose hearts were in the work, so they sought their careers elsewhere.

Family farms peaked in 1935, when there were 6.8 million across the country. That figure fell to around 2 million by 1970 and, in 2023, was down to 1.89 million according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The shift is clear in another USDA dataset, albeit one a little older. As of 2018, 89.7% of all American farms were small family operations. That overwhelming total doesn’t give that sector similar dominance on land or the value of production. Family farms account for 47.7% of farm acres and only 21.1% of the total production value.

What’s the wild card? Large and mid-scale family operations. If you add those into the mix, family farming accounts for 97.9% of all farms, 88.3% of the land and 87.6% of production value. In other words, the death of family farming has in some ways been overheralded.

There’s no question the landscape, both financially and literally, has changed. There’s also no question that there are legitimate questions about whether American agricultural policy places a thumb on the scales in favor of large operations compared to mid-sized and small farms. Families remain the heart of farming, though, even as those changes have proceeded.

And, lest people be tempted to think agriculture’s changes have lessened its importance to the overall Wisconsin economy, remember that most assessments place it as one of the three biggest industries in the state. Manufacturing and health care are the other two. The annual impact exceeds $100 billion for Wisconsin.

Farming is unquestionably different from when the Erickson family began farming in our region. That’s to be expected. The shifts since the post-WWI era are enormous, both in terms of technology and the implements used on farms.

Still, there’s something comforting in knowing that families remain attached to the land their ancestors began farming so long ago. And here’s to another hundred years.

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Wisconsin State Journal. March 10, 2024.

Editorial: Tailgate the state spelling bee to celebrate academics with gusto

Here’s a fun word for the Badger State Spelling Bee on Saturday in Madison:

T-a-i-l-g-a-t-e.

Would you like a definition? “To picnic at or near one’s automobile or in a parking lot, as before a sporting event,” according to Webster’s.

Language of origin? American English, according to the Etymology Dictionary.

Any of the 50 or so students competing for the state spelling title at the Mitby Theater on the Madison College campus Saturday would surely get such a familiar word right. It’s a bunny compared to such doozies as “onychorrhexis,” “epithalamium” and “cyanophycean.”

But we’re not proposing the word “tailgate” for the competition. We’re actually going to fire up our grills to cook and share brats and hotdogs outside the big event. Everyone — not just spellers and their families — is invited.

Let’s tailgate the bee!

IF YOU GO

Tailgate the Badger State Spelling Bee in the parking lot of the Mitby Theater, 1701 Wright Street, Madison, at 11 a.m. Saturday. Bring your own grill and food. Or just show up to hang out with State Journal staff and volunteers. We’ll be sharing free brats and hot dogs until they are gone.

It will show these impressive young people, who have worked so hard to get this far in studying and learning about words, that academics are just as impressive and praiseworthy as athletics. Actually, they’re more important, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.

Nothing against high school sports. We love them, too. They teach young people about teamwork, leadership, perseverance and physical fitness. But teen sports already get outsized public attention. Why don’t we celebrate brain power and critical thinking — at the forensics meet, the debate club and “battle of the books” — with as much enthusiasm as a touchdown?

It’s probably because studying isn’t as much fun as throwing a football. Yet learning to hit the books — and being able to apply that knowledge in the real world — is what truly advances most careers and society.

Tailgating is a great American tradition, though gathering and eating before competitions dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, according to University of California Irvine marketing professor Tonya Williams Bradford. Fans at Ivy League football games in the late 1800s sipped champagne and nibbled on food from the sidelines in horse-drawn carriages, according to the History Channel. By the early 1900s, wealthy Harvard and Yale alumni were driving to games in motorized buggies.

The Big Ten started building stadiums in the 1920s to accommodate growing legions of traveling fans. Station wagons with tailgates became popular in the 1930s, followed by portable grills and plastic coolers in the 1950s.

Wisconsin, of course, perfected the tailgate party, thanks to our German heritage that includes beer and brats. A big game on a fall morning outside Camp Randall Stadium wouldn’t have the same allure without charcoal smoke wafting above a sea of cars and excited fans.

That’s the kind of fun atmosphere we want to create at the Badger Bee on Saturday. It will be the 75th year of the Wisconsin State Journal sponsoring the event. So we want to do something special.

Come out and cheer on the state’s best spellers. Give a “U-rah-rah!” for reading, writing and ’rithmetic — none of which would be possible without letters.

Spelling is more than memorization. It’s understanding how words and their meanings go together and develop over time. The right letters and words improve our communication so that we can better understand one another.

The winners of Saturday’s state bee will represent Wisconsin in late May at the Scripps National Spelling Bee near Washington, D.C.

Let’s send off the winners in style. Meet us in the parking lot of the Mitby by 11 a.m. Saturday — two hours before the first word is pronounced. Bring your own grill and food. Or you are welcome to share ours, while it lasts. (No alcohol, please.)

Just look for the charcoal smoke wafting in the air.

END