1-3-20 immigrant workers

The Fond du Lac County Dairy and Livestock extension agent says without Latino workers area dairy farmers would be in trouble.   A generation ago, Wisconsin’s agricultural landscape was dominated by small and medium  sized dairy farms and immigration wasn’t necessarily a top issue for dairy farmers.  But extension agent Tina Kohlman says today the nation’s number two milk-producing state is home to a growing number of large concentrated aninal feeding operations dependent on immigrant workers.  “Absolutely important,”  Kohlman told WFDL news.  “For many of our larger operations these immigrants, or Hispanic dairy workers,  are pretty much the sole-source of the everyday tasks that have to happen on the farm.”   Kohlman says immigrant workers are doing jobs on the farms that domestic labor will simply not do.  “If  they’re not there I’m not sure where the pool of labor would come from.”   The number of workers on Wisconsin dairies has nearly doubled in the last decade at a time when rural areas in Wisconsin have been losing population.   Between 2000 and 2010 Wisconsin’s population grew by six percent, but more than a quarter of Wisconsin’s counties lost population.