Harried negotiations in Washington, D.C. have continued to reach an agreement for a one-year extension of the 2018 Farm Bill, and the Wisconsin Farm Federation Bureau’s Tyler Wenzlaff described the importance of the law to food producers in the state. With the Universities of Wisconsin campuses aside from the flagship UW-Madison mostly seeing enrollment declines and financial problems, one campus stands out — UW-Green Bay with record enrollment and an erased budget deficit — and Chancellor Michael Alexander explained how it was done.
 

Tyler Wenzlaff
Director of National Affairs, Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation

• The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation is hoping for a clean extension of the Farm Bill, a roughly $500 billion law last passed in 2018 with five years of funding that mostly supports nutritional programs for low-income people but also includes price support programs for agriculture producers, including dairy farmers in the state. If Congress cannot agree on an extension to the Farm Bill, existing programs expire, which Wenzlaff said would upend the milk market.
• Wenzlaff: “Wisconsin probably faces the most dire situation because of our reliance on dairy. We’re facing what’s called the dairy cliff if we don’t have something done by the end of the year. So, if we don’t have an extension done, USDA would be forced to revert back to a permanent law, which is from 1949, and so they’d have to begin purchasing dairy products at accelerated levels. That would be at twice the price of what we see right now. So, instead of farmers getting $25-$24 per hundredweight for their products, they’d see $50. While that may sound like a boon to Wisconsin farmers, the chaos that it would put into markets would outweigh any kind of benefits.”

Michael Alexander
Chancellor, UW-Green Bay

• With most Universities of Wisconsin campuses having falling enrollments and budget woes, UW-Green Bay saw record enrollment of 7,000 full-time students in the fall 2024 semester. Its chancellor said the university works to “meet students where they are,” making opportunities for non-traditional students who may be working or have families as well as offering dual enrollment for high-school students taking college credits toward a degree. Alexander also talked about getting creative with program cuts – like with the elimination of the theater major at UW-Green Bay and the discontinuation of in-person classes at the Marinette branch campus.
• Alexander: “We are looking very carefully about how to make sure we can get more students who take things like theater but that doesn’t mean we have to have a major in it. We believe, though, that those liberal arts classes are core to who we are — and Marinette, that’s a great example of this. In Marinette, we have a technical college that’s right next door to us and we still have options for education in Marinette for students who need the university or for an access point to their classes. But we’ve really invested in the theater there, and the theater in Marinette now is thriving — it’s sold out performances. It has really grown under UW-Green Bay and we’re really proud of that. I think we have to look at education differently, and we view Marinette broadly as a success, even though we don’t have in-person classes anymore.”

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