Cars, trucks and tractors driving down County Road G in Cedar Grove pass decaying barns, old silos and farm houses that pepper the flat Wisconsin landscape. A few minutes down the road sits Double Dutch Dairy LLC, owned by two brothers, Brody and Jory Stapel. Dozens of cows loiter behind the white barn and four blue silos.
The Stapels’ grandparents spent their honeymoon on a ship carrying them from the Netherlands to America in the 1950s, separated into respective quarters: men upstairs and women downstairs. The pair settled in Wisconsin and started a small farm. In the 1980s their son took control. Brody was born a few years later, and Jory a few more after that.
Like many farm children, the boys spent their days feeding calves and cows, milking, picking rocks, throwing hay bales, and helping with field work. Having missed many Friday night football games, Brody was turned off by the never ending work on his father’s farm. So, after high school, he left.
The Decline of Dairy Farms
Wisconsin was home to over 100,000 dairy farms in the 1950s. Today there are fewer than 10,000, and the number is still rapidly decreasing. With the rise of alternative dairy-esque beverages, restrictive trade agreements, and five consecutive years of depressed prices, many small Wisconsin dairy farmers are calling it quits. Still, although the number of dairies continues to dwindle, Wisconsin is producing more milk and cheese than ever before.
“In the 1930s we hit a peak in dairy farm numbers in this country,” said Dairy Task Force 2.0 Chairman Mark Stephenson. “Since that time we have been consolidating farm numbers. They have been getting fewer in number and larger in size, and that’s true across the country.”
The United States Department of Agriculture houses the Census of Agriculture Historical Archives, with information dating back to 1850. Of approximately 165,000 men living in Wisconsin at that time, almost 41,000 were farmers.
After marrying his wife, Carolyn, in 2007 and getting ready to start a family, Brody Stapel felt a desire to get back into dairy farming. By 2012 he and his brother had taken over their father’s farm and expanded the herd by 150 cows. Today Brody, his wife and four children live on the farm. Jory lives half a mile down the road with his wife and two kids.
Looking out across his farmland, Brody noted that all of his neighbors would have been dairy farmers in the 1940s. Now there are only two. On one side of the house, just through a small patch of trees, a woman with a red barn milks 80 cows. On the opposite side, a man with another red barn also milks 80 cows. There’s one more dairy three miles down the road, but almost everyone else nearby has sold out.
Photos: Elizabeth Sloan
Double Dutch Dairy LLC. 
Several cows relax after a morning milking. 
The milking parlor. 
Cow outfitted with orange health tracker.
“The only reason we can keep going is because my brother and I live on peanuts,” Brody said. “We own this thing, and we want it to survive, and we know that we have to do whatever it takes. So we scrounge and we dig, and it’s not any easier for us than the guy down the road. It’s just survival of the fittest.”
He says the farmers who will survive are those willing to change and adapt to become more efficient. Technology like John Deere’s self-driving tractors, waterbeds that allow cows a more comfortable rest, and robotic milking machines save farmers thousands of dollars and hours of time. The Dairy Farmers of America (DFA) announced an investment in dairy technology company SomaDetect, using artificial intelligence to improve the quality of milk and monitor the health of cows.
Almost every cow in the 220-head herd at Double Dutch Dairy is tracked by technology, similar to a FitBit, called Cow Manager System. The application monitors each cow’s ear temperature, eating and activity for the day. (Fun fact: when cows come down with a fever their ears get cold.) Brody set his phone to “moo” every time there is an alert.
Some older farmers are proactive in using new technology on their farms, while others have chosen to sell out and use their expertise working on other farms. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Statistics Service, in 2018 alone Wisconsin will lose more than 600 dairy herds.
Tariffs Trump Trade
In 2017 the Office of the United States Trade Representative was authorized to investigate whether steel and aluminum imports pose a threat to national security, as well as look into acts, policies and practices of the Chinese government in relation to technology transfer, intellectual property and innovation. In January 2018 the U.S. imposed steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, to which China responded by imposing retaliatory tariffs on over 100 U.S. goods. The following months saw tit-for-tat tariffs from the U.S. and China on billions of dollars worth of goods and products.
In May the Trump administration decided to end exemptions to steel and aluminum tariffs for U.S. allies. In response, the Mexican government imposed retaliatory tariffs, most of which are on U.S. agricultural goods, including various cheeses. The Canadian government responded by imposing a 25 percent tariff on steel imports. The EU is also enforcing tariffs on US products, including Kentucky bourbon, Levi jeans and Harley Davidson motorcycles.
In July 2018, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced that the USDA would work to assist farmers hurt by the retaliatory tariffs. The Market Facilitation Program will provide payments for producers of soybeans, sorghum, corn, wheat, cotton, dairy, hogs, shelled almonds, and fresh sweet cherries. Wisconsin farmers are set to receive $10 million, most expecting a check for around $2,000.
“This is a short-term solution to allow President Trump time to work on long-term trade deals to benefit agriculture and the entire U.S. economy,” Perdue said in the press release.
Across the country, farms of all kinds have been affected by President Trump’s ongoing trade war after spending years battling depressed prices and clawing for market access. In 2018 alone, 50 farms in Wisconsin have applied for Chapter 12 bankruptcy, reflecting low prices in corn, soybeans, beef and milk.
Creating Wisconsin Cheese
According to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, dairy means more to Wisconsin than citrus to Florida or potatoes to Idaho. Wisconsin’s dairy industry generates $43.4 billion for the state’s economy each year. It produced 30.32 billion pounds of milk in 2017, of which approximately 90 percent was turned into cheese. The state consistently maintains its status as the nation’s largest cheese producer, turning out 3.37 billion pounds of cheese in 2017.
Photos: Elizabeth Sloan
Sartori Factory in Plymouth, Wisconsin. 
Trucks transport milk each day. 
Employee watches over milk as it curdles. 
Curds and whey are stirred by machines.
Plymouth, Wisconsin, which calls itself the “Cheese Capital of the World,” is home to four major cheese processing facilities. Down the street from Fleet Farm and a Chevrolet dealership sits the dark brown office building of the fourth-generation family-owned Sartori Company. Inside, the building is clean and beautifully designed. A giant decorative wedge of their BellaVitano cheese with white Christmas lights sits in a corner and large prints of happy cows are pinned on the grey cubicles.
Family farms are extremely important to our business.
Jeff Schwager, Sartori Company President
Milk cannot be held in silos like grain, so the cheese produced today was made from milk that was in a cow this morning. Dairy cows are usually milked two to three times per day, with each cow producing up to four gallons of milk each time. That milk is held in a large cooler, where it is kept clean and cold until transport. Each batch is tested for quality before the cheese making process begins.
Stepping into a cheese factory like Sartori results in a sensory explosion, brought on by bright lights, loud machinery and pungent smells. To make the cheese, milk is first poured into vats to be pasteurized. A “starter culture” of good bacteria is added to convert the lactose into lactic acid. Next, a milk-clotting enzyme called rennet is added to curdle the milk. Once the casein, the main protein in milk, has curdled, whey protein is left behind as a thin, watery liquid. Cheesemakers dressed in white shirts and coats, hair nets, safety glasses and earplugs, oversee the stirring of the curds and whey until they have reached the desired firmness. The curd at Sartori is hand salted and then pressed into blocks.
Sartori cheese is produced three miles away from the office at the original Sartori factory, which has been operating since 1939.
In the future, Schwager hopes to see more research and innovation in the Wisconsin dairy industry. Similar to the way corn biomass was repurposed to produce ethanol fuel, he challenges someone to use the surplus of milk to find new uses for dairy.
Photos: Brody Stapel
The “Double Dutch Dairy Crew.” 
Double Dutch Dairy LLC. 
Brody Stapel with his wife, Carolyn, and kids. 
Brody and Megan Stapel check the herd.
In the meantime, the Stapel brothers and their families will continue to wake up before the sun, six days a week. Brody hopes his kids will develop the work ethic and sense of responsibility he did growing up on the farm.
An image from summer reminds him why working hard and scraping by are worth it.
“So we’re down by the barn feeding the animals at 6:30 in the morning,” he said. “Here come my 9- and 7-year-olds walking to the barn, holding hands, jogging along, ready to feed calves. I just sat there and thought, ‘This is why I do this.’”