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Dairy Business Association supports local Wisconsin road funding plan

A proposal to use $150 million from Wisconsin’s budget surplus for local road improvements is getting strong support from dairy farmers.

Chad Zuleger with the Dairy Business Association says, “It’s really a critical investment in our state’s rural infrastructure.”

Zuleger tells Brownfield town roads are usually the first mile to the market.   He says milk is perishable and must leave the farm, even if roads are posted with weight limits like they commonly are at this time of year.  “We’ve been talking about local roads and the state of local roads for a long time. The current programs just haven’t been enough to really deal with the problems that our producers are facing out there in rural Wisconsin, and we think this really addresses, puts the focus right on that first mile off the farm.”

Many of Wisconsin’s town and county roads have more restrictive weight limits during the spring thaw, forcing milk haulers to transport partial loads and raising the cost of getting milk from the farm to the processor.

Zuleger says the state’s dairy farmers will be focusing on getting support for this legislation when they host Dairy Day at the Capitol on April 19^th.