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Dairy Business Association members meet with Wisconsin legislators

Many Wisconsin dairy farmers spent Tuesday visiting with state lawmakers discussing legislation and regulation affecting their farms.

The Dairy Business Association’s Dairy Day at the Capitol gives farmers both a progress report on government initiatives and the opportunity to tell lawmakers what is important to them.  Government Affairs Director John Holevoet says the state nutrient trading proposal still needs to be passed, “Where we can trade phosphorus credits eventually as farmers or as custom operators with municipalities, potentially, who might be buying them because they have wastewater treatment facilities or maybe even industrial users, cheese plants and things like that.”

DBA’s Chad Zuliger told members the Manufacturing and Agricultural Tax Credit bill was expected to pass the State Senate late Monday before moving to the Assembly and would fix the original law, allowing crop insurance proceeds to be counted when applying for the credit. “For instance, if you lost half your crop, you’d get your crop insurance payment which wouldn’t be the entire yield of that crop, but that would be taxed and it wouldn’t… those proceeds would not be allowed in the calculation of the MAC. This corrects that.”

Farmers also talked with lawmakers showing support for truth in dairy and meat labeling bills, expanded use of the farmland preservation program, the farm machinery lemon law, a special farmer CDL license, and water quality initiatives including farmer-led watershed funding.