Reality is, at some point, you know, the banker says no, your suppliers say no, and you have to make that, you know, tough decision to you, just...
sell a lot stock and barrel and try to get everything paid off and maybe have a little bit for retirement or do you just keep going until there's nothing left?
He is the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
We are discussing what these rising diesel prices and tariffs mean for our family farms.
And you alluded to it just a little bit ago, but I'd like you to paint a stronger picture for us because obviously we've been talking about the tariffs here in this conversation.
We've been talking about the higher cost for equipment supplies.
And when you start layering on the diesel prices,
What does the financial picture look like right now for a typical family farm in the state of Wisconsin?
You know, for getting to the end of the year here now and the numbers are starting to get to where they're at.
You know, unless there's a good spike in corn, soybean prices, dairy prices, swine poultry, most farmers are going to be
struggling to make ends meet and you know the dairy industry right now the average price that farmers are receiving for their milk is about five dollars a hundred weights below what their actual production costs are you know of course there is some to get to that average there are some that are able to continue producing at that price that is that right now but
that real question is how much longer that's going to be able to happen because of everything else is going up in price.
It always certainly could see a two to three dollar increase in the production costs year over year at this point.
So looking into 2027, if that price for the milk that farmers sell, if it doesn't go up three to four dollars to cover some of those margins,
You're gonna be in trouble and and or we just end up needing to continue Depending on bailouts from the federal government to keep more farmers alive
Well, yeah, because, you know, as I've been talking about this cost of production and trying to maintain farms, you know, eventually, if we have fewer farms, fewer suppliers, they're just going to continue to increase that price.
When there's competition out in the marketplace, it keeps those prices somewhat in check and the concentration issue is becoming a bigger and bigger issue in all sectors of agriculture.
And that price gets handed down.
The farmer inputs that they have to have to keep their operation going.
Normally gets delivered by truck or sometimes a train to a local depot, but then ends up on a semi to get to the farm too.
So you have those added costs that will be handed down to the farmer there or handed up to the consumer on the other end.
And then everything that farmers sell leaves the farm by truck and therefore that diesel is being raised in the dairy industry.
A lot of milk plants now are putting subsidy on the farmer's milk check to pay for that extra cost of delivering the milk to that particular processor.
So ultimately that's going to be raising that dairy farmers.
price of or cost of production to produce that milk and and then you have the the processor processes it then it goes on another transportation mechanism most likely trucks to get to a distribution center and then the distribution center sends it out to the store where the consumer ultimately gets it and so there's three or four times that it's going in transportation and that diesel is not any cheaper
anywhere across the country, so you can't go look for a cheaper product because diesel might be a lot cheaper in, let's say, Montana, which probably isn't because of their ruralness there.
But those markets just aren't readily available to farmers to find a cheaper cost to get their products to the consumer.
I think the numbers are agriculture is 130 plus billion dollars of the state's economy.
And so if you start looking at
more of that, not getting into the economy because it's actually going out of the state to the petroleum industry.
We don't have a large petroleum industry or sector here in the state.
And so all that money is leaving the state and therefore, you know, the state budget is going to have an impact, which ultimately will affect the services that we get on a day-to-day basis.
Your road system is going to be impacted by that.
And then ultimately the consumers end up paying more for all of the necessities of life.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Obviously, there is a lot happening for Wisconsin farmers right now, and what happens on the farm can eventually affect all of us.
We're going to keep following how these rising costs play out across the state.
Remember, if you want more stories and issues from... It's
like we're going to see, especially here in the southern part of the state, you know, we'll offset some of that, but...
reality is there's probably going to be a deficit at the end of the year.
So having a good relationship with your banker is essential at this point to make sure that you can cover those operating loans and and then be able to get some another operating loan for the 2027 growing season.
Well, when you start seeing the same losses on a yearly basis for multiple years, depending on each farm situation, those farms that have generational ownership can weather some of those storms a little bit longer.
Or if it's an older farmer that's three, four to five years away from retirement.
and really wants to continue you'll you know extend those losses out over more years but reality is at some point you know the banker says no your suppliers say no and and you have to make that you know tough decision do you just sell a lot stock and barrel and try to get everything paid off and maybe have a little bit for retirement or do you just keep going until there's nothing left
He is the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
We are discussing what these rising diesel prices and tariffs mean for our family farms.
And you alluded to it just a little bit ago, but I'd like you to paint a stronger picture for us because obviously we've been talking about the tariffs here in this conversation.
We've been talking about the higher cost for equipment supplies.
And when you start layering on the diesel prices,
What does the financial picture look like right now for a typical family farm in the state of Wisconsin?
You know, for getting to the end of the year here now and the numbers are starting to get to where they're at.
You know, unless there's a good spike in corn, soybean prices, dairy prices, swine poultry, most farmers are going to be
struggling to make ends meet and the dairy industry right now, the average price that farmers are receiving for their milk is about $5 or $100 weight below what their actual production costs are.
Of course, to get to that average, there are some that are able to continue producing at that price that it's at right now, but that real question is how much longer that's going to be able to happen because of everything else is going up in price.
it always certainly could see a two to three dollar increase in the production costs year over year at this point.
So looking into 2027, if that price for the milk that farmers sell, if it doesn't go up three to four dollars to cover some of those margins, you're going to be in trouble and or we just end up needing to continue
depending on bailouts from the federal government to keep more farmers alive.
Well, yeah, because you know as I've been talking about this cost of production and trying to maintain farms, you know eventually if we have fewer farms fewer suppliers They're just going to continue to increase that price when there's competition out in the marketplace It keeps those prices somewhat in check and the concentration issue is becoming a bigger
and bigger issue in all sectors of agriculture and you know that price gets handed down you know the farmer inputs that they have to have to keep their operation going normally gets delivered by truck or you know sometimes a train to a local depot but then
ends up on the semi to get to the to the farm too so you have those added costs that will be handed down to the farmer there or handed up to the consumer on the other end and then everything that farmers sell leaves the farm by truck and therefore that diesel is being raised in the dairy industry a lot of milk plants now are putting
subsidy on the farmer's milk track to pay for that extra cost of delivering the milk to that particular processor.
So ultimately that's going to be raising that dairy farmers.
price of or cost of production to produce that milk and and then you have the the processor processes it then it goes on another transportation mechanism most likely trucks to get to a distribution center and then the distribution center sends it out to the store where the consumer ultimately gets it and so there's three or four times that it's going in transportation and that diesel is not any cheaper
anywhere across the country so you can't go look for a cheaper product because diesel might be a lot cheaper in, let's say, Montana, which probably isn't because of their ruralness there.
But those markets just aren't readily available to farmers to find a cheaper cost to get their products to the consumer.
I think the numbers are agriculture is 130 plus billion dollars of the state's economy.
And so if you start looking at
more of that not getting into the economy because it's actually going out of the state to the petroleum industry.
We don't have a large petroleum industry or sector here in the state and so all that money is leaving the state and therefore you know the state budget's going to have an impact which you know ultimately will affect the services that we get on a day-to-day basis.
Your road system is going to be impacted by that and
And then ultimately the consumers end up paying more for all of the necessities of life.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us.
Obviously, there is a lot happening for Wisconsin farmers right now, and what happens on the farm can eventually affect all of us.
We're going to keep following how these rising costs play out across the state.
Remember, if you want more stories and issues from all across Wisconsin, please visit civicmedia.us.
Wisconsin farmers could be looking at a strong harvest this fall, but getting that crop out of the field is getting a lot more expensive.
Diesel prices are climbing, tariffs are adding to other costs, and family farms are already operating on tight margins.
Darren Von Ruden is president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union and a dairy farmer himself.
He joins us now to discuss what these costs mean for farmers and why the impact isn't going to just stop at the farm.
So Darren, thank you so much for being here today.
And as you and I were talking just a few moments ago, this isn't going away.
And you are a dairy farmer yourself.
So when diesel prices climb this much right at a particular time of year like harvest, what does that actually mean on a farm?
And where do farmers start feeling that first?
Yeah, so where we feel it at first is when the diesel delivery truck brings the diesel out and you get the the bill for it and when it's a dollar and 30 or a dollar and 50 cents higher than the last time you filled up 500 gallons that equates out to another $500 or $750 at all in that range and
So the first thing you think about is, you know, where is that income going to come from to replace that increased in cost?
Yeah, we're hearing that, you know, as a dairy farmer, that's the industry that I hear the most from, but certainly
on the prop side and even on the beef side because you do have daily needs for tractors and equipment to operate those facilities and a lot of huge frustration with what's going on.
you know, because it's really a man-made issue.
It's not natural disaster or mother nature that's causing this issue.
So, you know, how do we get to a point where we can, you know, try to balance out the income and the losses to, you know, maybe be able to make a profit or at least break even, you know, with current pricing structures where they're at.
Most commodities are going to be seeing
probably 15 to 20% losses this year.
Some of the folks that were able to lock in diesel fuel prices last fall for spring harvest come through or spring planting, I should say, come through that season pretty good, but most of the suppliers have not been willing to lock in contracts at the price that farmers would be able to make a profit at.
looking at the fall harvest now and there's just as much diesel fuel used and fuel across the farm.
We're seeing that increased cost is not going to be able to be absorbed and farmers are just really trying to see if they can make it through.
We're talking, I've talked to a few neighboring dairy farms now that are really seriously considering selling the cows because
they're losing $1,000 a month for the smaller guys, the larger guys could be losing tens of thousands of dollars on a monthly basis.
At what point do you pull the plug and say enough is enough and maybe be able to have some income left at the end of that sales process to pay off all your debts and look for a new job?
And we're gonna, let's go back to the harvest question and we'll get into some of these other issues you just brought up in a minute, but by most accounts for the farmers who are thinking of harvesting, it's gonna be a pretty good harvest.
We had some pretty decent weather over the summer, what's always good for especially the corn crop.
And normally that would be really good news, but when diesel, equipment, fertilizer and other costs are running so high,
How much does a strong harvest actually help a farmer's bottom line right now?
Well, you know, like you said, a strong harvest should guarantee or give the farmer a possible profit for the end of the year.
Number one, because of the tariffs that we're seeing, commodity prices are probably lower than what they should be because we don't have those foreign markets to sell our product into.
So therefore it's backing up and filling up the grain bins across the country, which lowers that price to the farmer.
And when you're looking at a
You know, a $5 break even on corn and current prices are in that 450 to 470 range.
You know, that automatically says you're probably going to be losing 30 to 50 cents per bushel on the corn that you produce.
Soybeans is in that similar range of loss per bushel across the state of Wisconsin.
So, you know, certainly good yields like we're going to see, especially here in the southern part of the state.
We'll offset some of that, but reality is there's probably gonna be a deficit at the end of the year.
So having a good relationship with your banker is essential at this point to make sure that you can cover those operating loans and then be able to get some, another operating loan for the 2027 growing season.
Well, when you start seeing the same losses on a yearly basis for multiple years, you know, depending on each farm situation, you know, those farms that have generational ownership can weather some of those storms a little bit longer, or if it's an older farmer that's three, four to five years away from retirement.
and really wants to continue you'll you know extend those losses out over more years but reality is at some point you know the banker says no your suppliers say no and and you have to make that you know tough decision do you just sell a lot stock and barrel and try to get everything paid off and maybe have a little bit for retirement or do you just keep going until there's nothing left
He is the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union.
We are discussing what these rising diesel prices and tariffs mean for our family farms.
And you alluded to it just a little bit ago, but I'd like you to paint a stronger picture for us, because obviously we've been talking about the tariffs here in this conversation.
We've been talking about the higher cost for equipment supplies.
And when you start layering on the diesel prices.
Find out more at Civic Media.
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Stay with us.
We'll be right back.
Welcome to the Civic Media Spotlight.
I'm Dominic Lee, and we are thrilled you're tuning in today.
We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get right into it.
Welcome back to What's Going On with Earl Ingram, but it's always a privilege and an honor to have an opportunity to come before you to a listening audience.
And, you know, I really pride myself in
and having conversations that are relevant.
Far too many people are on airways and they're talking about nonsense and things that don't really matter.
And that's why I'm so excited about my guest today.
If I really took the time out to talk about his bio, we'd still be here to this time next year.
But I'm gonna just try to give a short.
bio of my guest because he's just done so many wonderful things in his life.
So my guest is Dr. Peter Cowey.
And he is the William Wyckoff Smith Chair in Cardiovascular Research at the Lackinow Institute of Medical Research and Professor of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology.
At Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, he is also the author of the upcoming book, Failure to Treat How a Broken Healthcare System Puts Patients and Providers at Risk.
It is that backdrop that I say and welcome Dr. Peter Cowley.
Good morning to you, sir.
How are you?
I'm doing well and I want to thank you very much.
Your introduction, by the way, was solidly on point.
There's nothing more relevant.
to talk about for people these days than health care.
You know, you know, I just, I was saying to you earlier and I'll say it now before the audience, I am a 72 year old, old geezer and uh,
I'm out
geezer.
I'm out geezer.
And proud to be a geezer, right?
Me
too.
But I in my life I've been blessed to never have been without health care and And I was telling the doctor that you know as a young man My dad worked in the auto industry in other places and he always had health care health care Was a part of I don't care where you worked.
It was a part of the fabric of our nation
And it was, if there was somebody who worked full time, who didn't have healthcare, we would all be amazed because it was part of, I think, a moral imperative that corporations looked at their employees as people that they valued.
And so here we are at a time today.
where so many people, and we have a nation that says it's completely changed over the last 40, 50 years, 40 years or so, where they look at it as a handout.
And the short sightedness of a doctor, and then we'll let you go ahead and talk about this.
unbelievable book that is as timely as any book that has ever been and the name of the book is failure to treat is that the short-sightedness of not covering people with health care and they're talking about the cost of overall cost of health care and that we can't afford it well it's because of that short-sightedness
that people wind up in emergency rooms that are just throwing money away with that backdrop?
Uh, am I so far off basing what I just said, doctor?
I don't know.
You're horribly on point, Earl.
I mean, you're, you've spread up probably three or four of the most important issues that the book deals with and that I've been concerned about for many years.
One is a lack of availability of healthcare.
It's
unimaginable that we would have gone from what you described 50 years ago.
My father, by the way, was a teamster.
He was a truck driver.
Okay, yeah, so you know.
Yeah, and he had great insurance.
But the other thing, Earl, that was really interesting back then is that healthcare didn't cost as much.
I remember going to the family doctor.
He had very simple office, no receptionist,
nurse.
You walked in, you didn't even have an appointment.
You waited your turn, you went in
same, right?
Ten bucks ten bucks.
You got your pills.
You got your shots You got examined and you and the guy was so good to you that you thought he was God It was honest the God Earl it's what prompted me to go into medicine was my interactions with that guy He was just such a he was like a demigod to my parents But anyway that we didn't have to worry if we went into the hospital my father had horrible asthma
And every once in a while, he'd have to go to the emergency room and get epinephrine or some other shot or whatever.
Never cost him a penny, nothing, zero for all those visits.
So how we got there, from there to a situation where upwards of 30 or 40% of people in this country don't have health insurance.
And then the other thing that people don't realize is another 30 or 40% are underinsured.
They have incredible co-payments.
They're paying a ridiculous amount of money out of pocket and they're not even covered for everything.
It is unimaginable, but Earl, what you said, another thing that you said that I think is very important is that this is a very rich healthcare system.
We've spent five and a half trillion dollars in 2025 on healthcare in the United States, five and a half trillion dollars.
And yet we have the worst healthcare system in the developed world.
There's no other country, no other developed country that has a worse healthcare system than we do.
Everybody else gets covered.
They get what they need, including their medications.
And they have better outcomes than we do.
So it's not only do we paying a lot of money, we're not ensuring everybody and we're not even taking care of the problems that we should be taking care of.
So doctor, so 30 years ago or so, maybe 40 years ago,
There were private practices.
I had my own private doctor.
He had his own practice.
And so if I needed to see him, I could call him up.
He knew me personally.
He knew what was going on with me.
I'd call a doctor.
Hey, Dr. Dale, I need to get in and see you.
He would say, okay, come on in this afternoon.
And now I have a doctor.
a primary doctor that I see twice a year when I'm not blaming the doctor, but when I see him, his nurse sees me for about 15 minutes and then he runs in and he says, open your mouth and he looks in my ear and he puts the stethoscope on and he checks and then he hits my knee with a little hammer and he says, oh, you're doing fine.
I'll see you the next time around.
What happened?
Yeah, well, what happened was that we had the incursion of private equity and other mechanisms by which we wanted health care to generate more revenue.
And in order to generate more revenue, doctors need to see more patients.
So in order for that to happen, there's only so many hours in the day, visit times were shrunk.
The average visit time with a primary care doctor in the United States is 10 minutes, Earl.
How is a doctor who's taken care of all of your problems, all of your medications, all your organ systems supposed to be able to make an assessment in 10 minutes?
Oh, by the way, that also includes documenting the visit.
So that includes a note or some kind of an entry into a computer.
So what we've done is we've gotten a lot of physician assistants and associated professionals to come in, as you said, and sort of lay the groundwork.
The doctor visit is extraordinarily short.
And trying to get hold of somebody in the office when you do have a problem is extraordinarily difficult.
Then the another thing that's happened earlier is that those doctors are not seeing you when you're in the hospital.
If you get hospitalized, you're not going to see your primary care doctor.
You're going to see a hospitalist who doesn't know you from Adam.
doesn't understand your problems and Fragments care because they they have to order things and do things because they don't they're Practicing in a vacuum.
They don't understand your problems It's created a good deal of dissatisfaction among the public people are not happy with this system as as it's currently been rolled out
So let me
ask you dr.
Corey you and I Bit long of tooth so we remember a time
when this wasn't the case.
But there's also a whole group of people who never saw the other time.
And so this is what they think, it's okay, this is all they've ever seen.
And so you've written this book to try to bring attention to what we, those of us who've been around a little while know is a train headed down.
the wrong path and yet we can't change it because money and capitalism has taken complete control over it and so the people in the discipline of medicine and health come second fiddle to
that am i am i wrong no you you hit it right again you you're very insightful or you're right on point that
When you mix medicine and business when you mix medicine with making money It's the formula for disaster Doctors, you know people who go into medicine they understand they're going to make a comfortable living But they're not going into medicine in order the vast majority know that they're not going to make a lot of money There are there's always a few bad actors who take advantage, but the vast majority of people nurses doctors Especially nurses
go into this because they really do want to help people.
They really do want to take care of people.
But they get into the system where everything is put in their path to prevent them from doing the kinds of things that they want to do.
I'm sure that if your primary care doctor had 20 minutes, he or she would love to sit down with you and talk to you
family and your problems.
They just simply can't do it.
I had a friend, a very close friend I went to college with,
in primary care.
And when his practice was bought out by a very large healthcare system, they came to him and said, we have a problem with you.
You're not seeing enough patients.
And if you don't increase the number of patients, we're going to have to make sure you come in on Saturdays and do a full day on
to make up for the backlog that you're not seeing.
And he said, but I want to spend more time with my patients.
And they said, that's just too bad.
You either do what we tell you or you're gone.
And you eventually
the next month, he quit because he just couldn't take it anymore.
That's what's happening in primary care.
We're losing doctors because they're under extraordinary pressure to produce and to make money.
You know, it's akin to an assembly line.
Yeah.
And so when I go in, the other part of this doctor is the unbelievable edifices that are built now.
Oh my God.
You know, I mean, again, I remember going into my doc, into my doctor's office.
Like you said, no frills, just little, little office.
And he would spend, if it was 30 minutes, whatever it took.
And he would say, by the way, how's, how's the kids?
How's your mom?
And, and while those things were going on, it was more personal.
But now, I don't know one hospital that survived that isn't just on a campus that is unbelievable.
It's like a mausoleum.
And they're beautiful, right?
I mean, they've got the latest gadgets, and technology continues to advance, and they've got to have the latest.
Well, if they're buying all those expensive
New items, they've got to, they've got to certainly use them.
Welcome to the Civic Media Spotlight.
I'm Dominic Lee, and we are thrilled you're tuning in today.
We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get right into it.
It's totally out of control.
I mean, we have high tech in medicine that is replicated many times.
For example, in Philadelphia, we have more high tech.
I'm an arrhythmia as you recall from my biography.
My area is cardiac rhythm abnormalities.
We have more arrhythmia laboratories for people get studies in this area where I live than in the entire United Kingdom.
Wow.
Do we need all of these laboratories?
Of course we don't.
But when you have a laboratory, like you remember what
Mark Twain said, you know, to a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
If you have a laboratory, you're going to use it.
You have to use it.
You have to generate revenue to pay for it.
And for the staff that are in the laboratory.
So this competition that we have among big city hospitals, for example, and hospital systems has contributed to the waste and the high cost of medical care that
people just don't care about.
Patients want to talk to their doctors.
They want to have their doctors available when they need them.
They want their simple questions answered and they just basically want human care and they're not getting it because of the system that we've created.
You know Dr. Cody, I could talk to you for 10 years because what we see here is almost criminal.
the competition, how many, um, and I'm forgetting now where they, they made, they created them not so long ago where you, they put your body in this machine and it, and it shoots pictures.
What is that machine?
An MRI or
MRI machine.
And, and so they've got, everybody's got them.
And so because everybody's got them, there's competition.
And so we've got to do this.
We've got to move.
And yet, you know, the cost of those things, it's almost impossible to keep up with that.
As a person who doesn't have insurance, they're not going to get that kind of treatment.
Isn't there something immoral about
that?
Well, let me take it one step further.
You've built these machines and you have a hospital and you're trying to create demand.
One of the ways that you create demand is by advertising.
Advertising for medical services is just off the charts.
And every hospital advertisement tells you that they are the best hospital.
I don't know how that happened, by the way.
I don't know how everybody that advertises is the best, but it somehow has happened.
And think about the amount of money that's spent.
on advertising things like drugs, hospitals, how about health insurance?
I don't know if you're a baseball fan or not, but I'm a big Philly fan, because I'm hearing Philly.
If you look at the field... Sorry about that, but anyway, go ahead.
If you look at the field in Philadelphia, there's a great big advertisement along the first and third baselines for a medical insurance company.
Why do they need to, this is the largest medical insurance company in our area.
Why do they need to spend millions of dollars on advertising their services when they deny service to people who have common problems?
You know about this, right?
Pre-certification, you need a test, the insurance company says no.
They're trying to save money, but they have no problem spending money on advertising.
The situation is really, I think,
I think you're exactly right.
We're getting close to the situation, which is not only absurd, but it's getting to the point of whether it's actually moral or not.
You know, Dr. Kowie,
because I can just take my own life and my own experiences with healthcare and what I've been experiencing.
And it just so happens, I was taking the medication.
It's called Repatha.
Pretty new medication and the doctor prescribed it for me and I had been taking it and it was really making a difference with my A1C and all those kind of things, just a great medication.
And all of a sudden, I'm looking to get a refill and I'm going to get the refill and the pharmacy says, well, you're no longer approved for it.
And I'm like, okay, I've been taking this medication now for months and six months.
And now you're telling me you took me off another medication in order for me to take this new medication.
And now here I am.
I'm not taking either the old medication or this new medication that you prescribed and trying to follow that path as just an average person.
I got caught up in like a nightmare.
Try who's passing this on, they're passing it on.
Who do I talk to?
The doctors can, the healthcare provider, all these different people.
And it took me almost a month and a half.
I'm supposed to take this every two weeks before we could finally get this worked out.
That's another part of this failure to treat.
and system broken that
you're talking about.
Yeah, as you recall, Earl, in the book, there's a story about a woman who had a pretty unusual tachycardia heart rhythm problem.
Her heart would start racing.
It's a story in the book.
It actually was my patient.
All the stories in the book are anonymized so that we don't, you know, there's nothing about them that you can tell who it is.
We gave her some medication and it worked like stink.
It was, it was just terrific.
Took her arrhythmia away.
She was so happy.
We gave her samples and then when she went to get her prescription filled that was denied by the insurance company and they wouldn't pay for it.
And she ended up going someplace else and having a procedure and the procedure basically destroyed her electrical system and she ended up, this is a 30-some-year-old woman ends up with a permanent cardiac patient.
That's an example of the insanity of the system where people like you and her need something that is already proven to be a factor and safe for that indication and yet in the middle of treatment.