Dairy Defined: Dairy Voyes Crucial to 2020 Elections

Oct 20, 2020

According to political forecasting website fivethirtyeight.com, Pennsylvania is currently rated as the most likely “tipping point” state in this year’s presidential election – the one most likely to put a presidential candidate past 270 electoral votes and into the White House in 2021. Wisconsin has also taken its turn at the top of the rankings of most-crucial states.

Other leading swing states include Michigan and Minnesota. These states have more in common than simply being politically competitive – central to deciding the White House in 2016 and top battlegrounds again. They’re also among the top U.S. dairy producers, putting dairy farmers at the center of an election that 69 percent of Americans consider the most important of their lifetimes.

Media articles have said that Wisconsin dairy farmers may hold the key to the White House, and dairy’s voting significance isn’t limited to the upper Midwest. Ohio, Florida, Arizona, Iowa, Texas — all of them are being actively targeted by campaigns, and each has a significant dairy presence. Much has been made of the importance of “the farm vote” in 2020. But through accident or historical design, the farmers who may have the most say in this year’s key campaigns are the ones milking cows.

With so much attention focused on where they live, what should dairy farmers or industry allies do? It all comes down to basic civics and citizenship. People vote their conscience – but from a dairy perspective, here are a few thoughts that might be helpful when considering who to vote for, at all levels of federal races.

International trade is an important part of dairy, and will only be more so in the future.
Federal disaster assistance has been crucial to producers this year, and the need is ongoing, for all producers of all sizes.
Dairy labor demands continue to be acute and require solutions.
Fake-dairy labeling has been an easy issue to kick down the road. But doing so only makes the problem worse. It must be resolved.

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Video: Feeding 300 Sheep In Just 14 Minutes!

Join us for our daily twilight chores on our working sheep farm and watch how we feed sheep the old-fashioned way with barely any technology. Buckets may not be exciting to watch, but they are an inexpensive, fast, and efficient way to feed sheep requiring practically no input costs except for the grain itself and a little manpower. At the moment, we have about 600 Suffolk and Dorset sheep and lambs on our working sheep farm in Ontario, Canada. We feed them twice a day, and in the growing seasons, they are also free to go to pasture. Daily chores consist mainly of feeding the sheep and letting them out to pasture at this time of year. We feed twice a day, which sometimes entails rolling out a bale of hay and, at other times, forking left over hay out so that they can reach it. Feeding grain just takes minutes to do in each barn.