Paul Dietmann on LinkedIn: Way back when I was in grad school at UW-Madison my major professor Dr… (2024)

As the former Sauk County UW-Extension Agricultural Agent—a position that seems to be vacant more than occupied since I left in 2007 to become a Bureau Director at the WI Department of Ag—I was recently invited to present an overview of trends in the county’s ag economy to this year’s cohort of the Sauk County Institute of Leadership. One of the most stunning trends has been the steep decline in the number of dairy farms. When I moved here in 1987 there were 743 dairy herds in Sauk County and 36,569 cows, with an average herd size of 49 cows, with most being milked in stanchion barns.Today there are only 108 herds remaining with roughly 17,000 cows, the vast majority being parlor/freestall operations.Back in 1987 you could drive along any of the county’s ridge roads at dusk and see barn lights glowing in every direction.Today you’ll find darkness. There was no feeling quite like walking into a stanchion barn on a winter night when all outdoors was cold and silent.A stanchion barn during evening milking was bright, warm and alive; the sweet smell of haylage, dusty odor of barn lime and straw, rhythmic wooshing of the vacuum line, radio playing, cows rattling their stanchions, cats meandering beneath the cows hoping for a shot of milk, a pace of work that gave a dairy farmer time to talk with a visitor who dropped in out of the cold.There are many reasons, both purely economic and socioeconomic, for the disappearance of stanchion barn milking.Still, it’s hard not to be a bit nostalgic about an experience lost to future generations.Not long ago I was visiting farms in an Amish community where I have many clients.It was getting late, I’d already made eight farm visits that day and had to make one last quick stop to get a document signed before heading home.My client had just started milking when I arrived.I could not recall the last time I’d been in a stanchion barn during evening milking. I got the signature, stayed through the rest of milking, and then we leaned against the bulk tank and talked a while longer before I finally, reluctantly, left.

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Thanks to #SandCountyFoundation and #USDA-NRCS we were awarded a Regional Conservation Partnership Program ((RCPP) grant to convert the last of our row crop acres to managed grazing. One of the guys in our farmer-led watershed group just bought a new Einbock air seeder, and he came over today to interseed a mix of grasses and legumes into the existing hay. A couple of guys saw the seeder heading down the road and they stopped in to watch it in action. It’s quite a machine!

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I guest lectured today in Ag Econ 419, Agricultural Finance, at UW-Madison. Talked about the Farm Credit System and ag lending more broadly, touched on the Farm Crisis of the 1980s and the regulatory reforms that resulted from it, and discussed the recent increase in unregulated lenders and investors coming into agriculture. A bonus was my daughter Elise sitting in on today’s class. Afterwards we met up with my other Badger, James, and had lunch together. We recently learned that their younger brother has been accepted at UW-Madison and will be joining them on campus in the fall.

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From the balance sheet of one of my clients. You can just about form a picture of the truck in your mind, can’t you?

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I’m on vacation this week in Puerto Rico with my family. Today we took a harrowing drive up into the mountains and visited Sandra Farms, a 250-acre organic coffee farm. The owners purchased the farm in 1994 and financed it with Farm Credit Puerto Rico, one of our sister associations in the Farm Credit System. We had a good conversation about the challenges facing small-scale specialty crop farmers on the island, and how small-scale growers are able to benefit from growing consumer demand for high quality products. #regenerativeagriculture #sustainableagriculture

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My colleague Sai Thao and I attended the Organic and Non-GMO Forum in the fall of 2019. We were just rolling out our organic transition loan program and thought it would be a good place to begin letting people know about it. Never having been to the Forum before, I expected to find the same jeans and plaid shirts crowd as the Marbleseed (formerly MOSES) Organic Farming Conference that I’ve attended every year since 1994. Instead, the Forum was more of an expensive-suit-no-tie gathering. There were folks from multinational corporations, Ivy League universities, venture capital firms, huge foundations, and a few farmers. The attendees were very smart and engaging folks, and we learned a lot. For instance, Sai and I had an interesting conversation with someone who led a regenerative agriculture investment firm from California. We asked her what their minimum deal size might be. She responded, “Oh, we’re willing to make really small investments, as small as $5 million.”That was an eye-opener. I’d never before thought of $5 million as a small investment. The fund manager asked about our minimum deal size. When we said that we make loans as small as $5,000 or $10,000 to regenerative farmers, she abruptly ended the conversation and walked away. She clearly didn’t want to waste another minute talking to these two clowns about their micro-loan program. In the five years since that Forum, we’ve seen a big increase in the number of investors jumping into regenerative agriculture. They are drawn by a desire to help transition more acres to regenerative practices while achieving better than average returns. How many are willing to consider very modest, farmer-scale investments, or is the focus only on multimillion dollar projects covering thousands of acres each?I would love to hear your thoughts. #regenerativeagriculture, #sustainableagriculture

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I'll be co-presenting a workshop with three of my Farm Credit System colleagues at the 2024 National Farm Viability Conference in Charleston, West Virginia. This is always a really informative event for professionals who help farmers start and sustain successful farm operations. Join us if you can.

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Very proud of the important work being done by our daughter in the Murtaza lab at UW-Madison. Elise is part of a team that has been working on a project using non-cellular DNA obtained from dried blood spots to detect cancer. By observing characteristics of the DNA and patterns of mutations, they can identify if cancer is present, the type of cancer, and in which part of the body it is located. I think I’m describing this correctly. Elise had to put together a PowerPoint to explain her work to me. The low cost and convenience of the process will be particularly impactful for people in remote parts of the world. They will be able to put a few drops of blood on a piece of test paper, let it dry, and send the the sample to a lab via regular mail. Last week Elise got to travel to Austria with the team from her lab to attend the CNAPS Symposium. As an added bonus, she was able to spend a few days in Vienna with my cousin Stephen and his son, Leo. Every parent’s greatest hope is that their children will make a difference in the world. I know ours will.

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