Wisconsin Hay Farmers vs. Big Ag
A conversation with Lisa Doerr, co-owner of a hay farm in Polk County that supplies food for small-scale livestock farmers in the area.
Maximillian Alvarez
We conclude our series of interviews from rural Wisconsin with farmers and community members fighting to defend life as they know it from the onslaught of Big Agriculture and the factory farming industry. As part of a special collaboration between The Real News Network and In These Times magazine for “The Wisconsin Idea,” Max, Cameron Granadino (TRNN), and Hannah Faris (In These Times) travelled to Polk County in Western Wisconsin over the summer to speak with residents about their fight to halt or, at least, adequately regulate a proposed concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) that would house 26,000 hogs and produce millions of gallons of liquid manure every year. In this interview, Max sits down with Lisa Doerr, who has been on the front lines of this struggle and lives right down the road from where the proposed CAFO would be built. Lisa and her husband own and operate a hay farm in Polk County that supplies food for small-scale livestock farmers in the area.
Additional links/info below…
- Working People, “Kristy Lynn Allen”
- Working People, “Hog Wild (w/ Lisa Doerr, Forest Jahnke, Hannah Faris, & Maeve Conran)”
- Maximillian Alvarez, Cameron Granadino, & Hannah Faris, The Real News Network, “Factory Farms Pose an ‘Existential Threat’ for Rural Wisconsin Communities”
- Grace Connatser, Wisconsin State Farmer, “Documentary Captures Rural Wisconsin’s Struggle with Hog CAFOs”
- Maeve Conran, Just Solutions, “Rural Wisconsin Communities Battle Industrial Scale Hog Farms”
- Simon Davis-Cohen, In These Times, “ ‘In for a Fight’: Rural Wisconsinites Resist Influx of Industrial Hog Facilities”
Permanent links below…
- Working People Patreon page
- Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!
- Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- In These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter page
- The Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter page
Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org)
- Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song”
I hope you found this article important. Before you leave, I want to ask you to consider supporting our work with a donation. In These Times needs readers like you to help sustain our mission. We don’t depend on—or want—corporate advertising or deep-pocketed billionaires to fund our journalism. We’re supported by you, the reader, so we can focus on covering the issues that matter most to the progressive movement without fear or compromise.
Our work isn’t hidden behind a paywall because of people like you who support our journalism. We want to keep it that way. If you value the work we do and the movements we cover, please consider donating to In These Times.
Maximillian Alvarez is editor-in-chief at the Real News Network and host of the podcast Working People, available at InTheseTimes.com. He is also the author of The Work of Living: Working People Talk About Their Lives and the Year the World Broke.
