Blog post written by Brenda Damrow Gudex, executive director of Wisconsin Corn
Right now, Wisconsin corn growers are measuring their days in acres. Combines run late, grain carts run later, and every dry hour counts. So I understand when a trip to the polls on Tuesday, November 3, feels like one more thing on a long list.
Every grower, every farm family, and every neighbor in our rural communities should make that trip. Not for a party or a candidate. For the decisions that land on our kitchen tables and in our hometowns long after the ballots are counted.
This fall, Wisconsin will elect a governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, state legislators, and members of Congress. The people we choose will help set the rules we farm under and the priorities that shape rural communities across our state. That’s reason enough to show up. Farmers make hundreds of business decisions a year: what to plant, what to spend on inputs, when to
sell, whether to invest in a new bin or a new conservation practice. In my work, I see how many of those decisions are shaped by people we elect. It’s more than most of us would like.
Think about what comes out of Madison and Washington. Property tax policy and how farmland is assessed. Funding for the rural roads and bridges we haul grain on. Water quality and conservation rules, and whether they’re workable on a real farm. Where high-voltage transmission lines get sited. Trade relationships that open or close markets for our corn. Policy on ethanol and E15 that drives demand right here at home. Every one of those touches margins that are already thin.
My job, every day, is to make sure lawmakers understand what these choices mean on the ground. I can tell you from experience that our voice in the Capitol carries the most weight when the people who sent lawmakers there include the farmers who live with the results. Elected officials pay attention to who votes. I want rural Wisconsin to give them every reason to pay attention to us.
It’s not just the farm, either. Our farms are part of small towns that need each other. The co-op, the implement dealer, the clinic, the school, the fire department, the café on Main Street. When those places do well, farms do well, and the other way around.
A lot of what keeps rural Wisconsin going is decided at the ballot box, too. How state dollars get split between cities and the country. Whether our roads get fixed. Broadband that actually works. Health care you don’t have to drive an hour to get. How much of the bill lands on local property taxpayers. All of that has a lot to do with whether our kids can make a life here and whether the next generation comes back to the farm.
When rural voters stay home, those decisions get made without us. Rural Wisconsin deserves a seat at that table. So learn where the candidates stand on agriculture and rural Wisconsin, and then go vote the way you see fit.
Voting in person on Election Day is simple if you plan ahead. Polls are open Tuesday, November 3, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m., and if you’re in line by 8, you can vote. Y If you can’t make it on Tuesday, contact your municipal clerk to find out when and where early in-person voting is offered in your community, since hours and locations are set locally and vary from town to town.
Plan your day around it. Vote before you head to the field or on the way to the elevator. Every spring, I’ve watched farmers plant trusting that the work they put in will pay off at harvest. Voting works the same way. Let’s make sure rural Wisconsin is heard on November 3.
