After 8 Years, Election Year Walker pulls Dairy Farmer rescue out of his a**!!!

If you've been following my blog, I've been begging Scott Walker and the Republican legislature to save the dairy industry, an odd request considering the fact that we're "America's Dairyland." Republicans even wanted to retire the slogan so they could emphasize their massive Foxconn handout with something more high tech.

Suddenly in a difficult election year...8 years later, Scott Walker got wind of his massive failure with dairy farmers and is now trying to cover his ass, like he did with the youth prisons and the ObamaCare exchanges. The reality is even worse for dairy, and all the signs were there 8 years ago...the message is clear, he's just not that into you (dairy farmers):

WPR: On Tuesday morning, Gov. Scott Walker announced the creation of the Wisconsin Dairy Task Force 2.0. "By creating this task force, industry experts can work together to create real solutions that can help our farmers, processors, and allied organizations, and to ensure that our dairy industry is not only our past, but our future."

Trump's outrageous trade tariffs could ultimately hurt dairy farmers that rely on other crops to sustain themselves when dairy prices are low.

“I thank the Governor for recognizing the importance of the dairy industry to our state’s economy,” said DATCP Secretary Harsdorf, "as the industry works together to maintain Wisconsin’s status as a leading dairy state.”

Bigger the Better-CAFO's (concentrated animal feeding operation): Ya think? But don't think for one second Walker is trying to save Wisconsin's family owned small and mid-sized farms under 700
dairy cows...that's way too small to be bothered with:

Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at UW-Madison, who will lead the new group of experts says that saving the small dairy farms at the expense of the overall state dairy industry is not a good idea. “I’m not going to tell people that we should somehow try to freeze farm structure as it is today, that this is perfect ... I think, would be real short-sighted ... When a farmer is a better cow manager and then maybe later becomes a better people manager and then a better manager of business and finances, he has both the incentive and the wherewithal to manage a bigger farm. So I think that the bigger farms have sorted out a lot of our better farmers.”

In other words, if you don't get bigger, you're either not one of the "better managers" or you're living in the past. Or maybe you're one of those odd "organic" type farmers, which nowadays isn't so odd and just about everywhere you look:

But Stephenson believes there should always be a place for the small dairy farm in Wisconsin. “That means that some of these farms are going to be able to find a customer base that values things like organic, grass-fed or some other connection that leads them to a smaller farm operation.” 

The group also is expected to address how the industry must do a better job of selling their products and the new technologies used to make them, Stephenson says. “...the changing consumer ... the younger generations like the millennials don’t care about the guy in a white lab coat at all. They care about what Susie Blogger says about the product.”

Well, maybe Stephenson will care about what this blogger says when it comes to the lack of marketing lactose-free milk products. In a google search for "lactose free," almost everything came up with milk alternatives...but not milk. Think about it, when nearly 65 percent of the population thinks they're lactose intolerant, whether they are or not, why is that market completely ignore:

According to the National Digestive Diseases Information Clearinghouse, some 30 million to 50 million Americans are lactose intolerant … Approximately 65 percent of the human population has a reduced ability to digest lactose after infancy … including up to 75 percent of African Americans and American Indians and 90 percent of Asian Americans. People with ancestry from Northern Europe, on the other hand, have a 5% rate of lactase deficiency.

The National Dairy Council may be doing more harm than good playing down the lactose problem, handing the market over to alternatives like soy, hemp, almonds, and coconut.

Prevalence of lactose intolerance may be far lower than previously estimated ... data from a national sample of three ethnic groups, reveals that the overall prevalence rate of self-reported lactose intolerance is 12 percent -- with 7.72 percent of European Americans, 10.05 percent of Hispanic Americans and 19.5 percent of African Americans who consider themselves lactose intolerant.

Lactose-Free? Actually, they add lactase that turns lactose into digestible sugar, making milk just a little bit sweeter:

Lactose has already been digested into glucose and galactose, you don’t need to be able to produce the lactase enzyme to digest the milk.

Funny thing, Walker gives credit to the UW, the one entity he and Republicans have attacked and defunded relentlessly for years:

Wisconsin is also home to a vibrant dairy processing industry, renowned universities and research facilities, extensive network of agribusinesses, and the World Dairy Expo ... 96% of the state’s dairy farms are family owned ... creates nearly 80,000 jobs and generates $43.4 billion in economic impact every year, nearly half of agriculture’s total economic impact.