Report: Wisconsin farm, food industry grows slightly behind the rest of state’s economy

Wisconsin’s agriculture industry has grown over the last five years. But new data shows farming and food’s contribution to the state’s economy has gotten smaller.

The study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that agricultural production and food processing contributed $116.3 billion in revenues to the state’s economy in 2022.

That’s nearly 11 percent higher than the same report from 2017, growth that’s been celebrated by Gov. Tony Evers’ administration and the ag industry.

The study also found that farming and food processing made up 14.3 percent of the state’s total revenues, which is 2 percentage points less than in 2017.

Steve Deller, UW-Madison professor of agricultural and applied economics and co-author of the report, said that’s because the state’s overall economy is growing.

“The size of the pie is getting bigger,” Deller said. “Agriculture’s slice of that pie is also getting a little bit bigger, but it’s not growing at the same pace as the state’s economy is growing.”

Deller said the shift is small and the industry’s overall growth is still a positive sign. But he said the latest version of the report did find some signs of economic pressures on agriculture.

The number of jobs in farming and food processing declined by 19 percent over the five-year period.

The change is partly due to a decrease in the number of farms in the state. The report found there were 6,272 fewer farms in 2022, a decline of nearly 10 percent from the 2017 data. Deller said consolidation often allows larger farms to operate with fewer people.

Jeff Hadachek, Deller’s co-author of the report and an assistant professor at UW-Madison, said the decline in jobs could also be from increasing adoption of labor-saving technology.

He pointed out that the five-year period between the reports includes the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses of all types struggled to hire and maintain enough workers.

“As a result of that, maybe farmers and the food industry were forced to adopt (labor-saving) technologies more quickly than they otherwise would have,” Hadachek said.

The report found the number of food processors in the state increased by 7 percent from 2017 to 2022. Hadachek said a shift toward locally-processed meats and other foods during the pandemic helped grow the industry, on top of a more long-term shift toward producing more specialty items like cheese.

This year’s version of the study also calculated the amount of greenhouse gas emissions linked to farming and food processing in the state, the first time this data was included. The industry contributed 17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent, making up about 14 percent of statewide emissions.