How Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Are Supporting Family Farms

Talk to a cheesemonger or a cheese shop owner and you’ll most likely find a tireless advocate for farmers and cheesemakers. “There are so many amazing small makers that aren’t being seen. People just are completely unaware that they exist. Then they try these beautiful products and they’re blown away,” says Ashley Grant, owner of Bountiful Boards, a shop specializing in custom charcuterie boards, in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

Bountiful Boards sells only small-batch cheeses that arrive seasonally; building a strong following for specific cheeses from small in-state producers. Grant’s inventory is not solely driven by taste though. She is keenly aware that small dairy and cheese producers rely upon a locally grown consumer audience to stay in business. And in towns like Green Bay, where Bountiful Boards is the sole artisanal cheese shop, evangelizing for small producers plays a critical role in their visibility. During classes and events, she tells what she calls “stories of passion and fight,” because, “The more I can do that, the better advocacy there will be for a level of quality in production in the state.”

Red Barn co-owners Terry and Paula Homan — Red Barn co-owners Terry & Paula Homan

Cheesemongers aren’t the only ones supporting cheesemakers and farms. Paula Homan is the co-owner of Red Barn Family Farms in Appleton, Wisconsin, a producer with a unique pricing scale that is designed to help preserve small family farms. Grant often highlights Terry and Paula Homan’s award-winning cheeses, and the company’s mission, during group tasting events and on her custom charcuterie boards. Says Homan, “Our goal is always to grow our sales in order to add more small-scale farms to our list of producers.” However, she observes, “Small family farms are exiting the industry in Wisconsin and nationally at an alarming rate.”

Here, Grant and Homan describe how local patronage and consumer education can make a critical difference in the survival of small dairy producers.

Small and medium-sized dairy farms, many of which span generations within families, have steadily shuttered in Wisconsin since 1968. This attrition diminishes economic opportunity, as potential second-generation farmers seek other career possibilities. Yet it wasn’t until 2010 that the U.S. Department of Labor’s Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship began recruiting and training aspiring dairy farmers in Wisconsin.

Vertical Integration

One issue is vertical integration, says Homan. When a larger company acquires direct ownership of parts of a supply chain to obtain greater efficiency or control, this eliminates smaller producers. For dairy producers, costs for grain and hay increase when this happens, increasing production costs beyond what farmers earn in sales for their milk. Additionally, Homan says that consolidation in retail and distribution limits consumers’ ability to get their products, as large distributors often have “one-size-fits-all expectations of their vendors that only make sense for large producers with extensive catalogs and marketing budgets.”

Infrastructure Limitations Small Producer Challenges

Cheese Baseball Hats — Cheese Baseball Hat

Homan also details a few granular challenges to continued growth: For example, Red Barn Family Farms doesn’t own a cheese plant, so production is limited to what fits in third-party plants’ schedules. This makes expanding a cheese catalog very challenging.

Grant notices that small producers consistently run up against limitations in scalability. She says, “How do they go from making a beautiful product to wholesale distribution, getting it into the marketplace beyond a 40-mile radius? They reach a certain stage and then need an influx to be able to grow.”

Many larger corporations have established production in Wisconsin, says Grant, because we have “great land and capability for that,” but their presence has led to legislation that can strain smaller farms. For example in Wisconsin where cold storage must be maintained at 41 degrees or less, a larger corporate entity can readily hire an employee to oversee loading and unloading, timing to the second how long cheese has gone unrefrigerated, while a smaller producer simply may not have the budget the added expense.

Local Advocacy & Supply Chains

Homan believes consumers intuitively care about supporting their local producers and economies, but, she says, they “need access to these products if they are not available in the grocery chains.”

Small producers can build alternative local and regional supply chains, says Homan, though this requires collaboration and cooperation. For that reason, Grant actively facilitates connections to help producers create and sell more product, connecting cheesemakers with production and refrigeration spaces, and with one another. “I try to get them set up so they can continue growing together and help one another get to that point—because for so many small makers, making the initial jump from small-to-medium-to large-business can’t proceed unless they get help from somewhere else.”

Grant also invests her own space for refrigeration and buys as much as she can from her producers. With some, she builds partnerships to help with marketing and promotion, and to host pop-up spaces. Once consumers meet their small dairy producers, says Grant, “It makes the person buying that product so much happier. They feel a new connection, not only to the brand, but to the brand’s owner. A whole other relationship is formed, and it’s a loyalty that will continue.”

She adds, “I would love to do more as I continue to learn and make connections. I try to get their stories out as much as possible, to support them with my voice and my platters and my shop. I post and talk about them constantly on every social media platform to say, “This is the kind of cheese it is, this is where it’s made, this is what it’s washed in, come in and try it.”