Farming

Chef Diane Moua is a three-time James Beard award finalist, and her restaurant Diane’s Place was named Food and Wine magazine’s 2025 Restaurant of the Year.

Surveys by the Federal Reserve Banks of Minneapolis and Chicago found tougher farm credit conditions in the third quarter of 2025. Surveyed farm lenders reported lower rates of loan repayment and higher demand for extensions and new loans. 

Winter farmers markets are not new in Wisconsin, but a few communities have started them up recently.

Wisconsin farmers had a great growing year for crops. That has led to actual mountains of corn at grain elevators around the state.

Wisconsin farmers are cautiously optimistic that a trade deal between the Trump administration and China will help give soybean growers more market certainty moving forward.

The town of Carlton board chair says most residents are comfortable with nuclear energy but leery of losing farmland to other projects.

Allison Jonjak comes from a multigeneration family cranberry farm in Sawyer County. As a cranberry outreach specialist traveling around the state, she believes the industry is moving in a positive direction.

This harvest season, the trade war with China has added to the farm economy’s woes, as producers deal with lower crop prices and high costs.

“Cranberries and cranberry farming were here before Wisconsin was Wisconsin,” a state cranberry association leader said. “Even before Wisconsin was fully a state within our country, there were people here growing and commercially raising cranberries.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is expecting a strong corn and soybean harvest this year. But low crop prices, high input costs and international trade uncertainty could hurt farmers.