Submitted by Danny Akenson, GROWW
BAY CITY, WI – On Saturday, March 22, 2025, at 10:00 a.m. GrassRoots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW) members and other locals are speaking with Minnesota author and farmer’s daughter Sonja Trom Eayrs on the impacts and history of corporate consolidation in farming.
“This is a conversation and history many of us need right now,” says Danny Akenson, Field Organizer with GROWW.
Eayrs, attorney and author of “Dodge County, Incorporated: Big Ag and the Undoing of Rural America,” will share her experience in fighting massive factory farms in Minnesota that threatened her home. “Dodge County, Incorporated” recounts the Trom family’s three rounds of litigation against county officials to prevent a corporate factory farm from going up across the road from their intergenerational family farm in Dodge County, Minnesota. With the factual rigor of an attorney and the passion of a farmer’s daughter, Eayrs weaves together her family’s struggles to fight corporate injustice in rural America and the larger story of corporate livestock production in the United States: the air and water pollution, the cancer clusters, the destruction of local communities and economies, and the erosion of the democratic process.
The book provides a rare insider’s account, showing how the corporate restructuring of rural areas and profiteering of Big Ag corporations impacts the political, economic, and cultural fate of a single rural community.
With corporations like Breeze Dairy Group (Ridge Breeze Dairy) moving into Pierce County, (and doing business in St. Croix County) Western Wisconsin community members are invited to come discuss and learn more.
Eayrs’s story mirrors the story of many local residents. As many have organized in opposition to expansions to preserve local water, roads, and small farms, residents continue to explore a contested case with the DNR over the approval of Ridge Breeze Dairy’s permit.
Interestingly, it was reported that the Public Hearing regarding the Ridge Breeze expansion that had been scheduled in the Town of Salem, has been cancelled and delayed until further notice.
This public hearing was concerning an $18 million public loan that Ridge Breeze has secretly been pursuing through the Public Finance Authority (PFA) for months. However, PFA policies allow local governments to deny these loans if they’re not in the public interest… that means the Town of Salem can simply say, “No” to giving Ridge Breeze the funds.
Without a hearing, Ridge Breeze’s grab for public funds can’t move forward.
“Sonja’s story shows that no matter where we live, when a community bands together, we can create a better future for our families,” says Akenson. Community members across western Wisconsin are invited to join the conversation from 10:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the Bay City Village Hall, on Saturday, March 22, 2025.
GROWW is a grassroots organization based in Western Wisconsin. We build power in our communities and create the change we need for all of us, no matter the color of our skin, how much money we have, or who we love. Together, we work toward a future where we all make ends meet, live with dignity, and have a voice in shaping the decisions that impact us. We began our work in 2019 as Pierce County GrassRoots Organizing, and grew out of the name as we began to organize with communities in seven Western Wisconsin counties: Barron, Buffalo, Dunn, Pepin, Pierce, Polk, and St. Croix.
To get connected or learn more about GROWW, visit us at GRO-WW.org, on Instagram at @GrowWisconsin, or on Facebook at Facebook.com/GROWWisconsin.
