Congressional Candidate, Niina Baum, to spend Day Working on Gilman Dairy Farm to Celebrate June Dairy Month

Gilman, WI — 7th Congressional candidate Niina Baum will spend a day working alongside Tristan Swartz at Doing it Wrong Dairy in Gilman, Wisconsin as part of June Dairy Month. Baum will milk cows, bed stalls, and carry out the full range of daily farm work, the same work she grew up doing on her family’s Price County dairy farm.

Swartz, owner of Doing it Wrong Dairy, has built one of the most followed farm social media platforms in the Midwest with 324,000 Facebook followers dedicated to honest, unfiltered dairy farming content. The collaboration reflects a shared commitment to authentic representation of what small dairy farming actually looks like.

“Taking a photo in front of a tractor and saying you support farmers is just not enough,” said Baum. “This is a very nuanced industry and if you’ve never experienced it, worked it, or lived in it, you can’t fully understand it.”

Baum grew up on a dairy farm in Price County, Wisconsin. When she was young there were over 24,000 dairy farms in Wisconsin. Today they have consolidated down to 6,500.

Among the policy issues Baum and Swartz will discuss while working:

  • Breaking the Farm Bill into smaller, more focused legislation so family farm priorities are not buried under thousands of pages of unrelated policy
  • Protecting the right to save and replant seeds
  • Investing in local and regional meat processing so farmers have viable markets beyond consolidated national packers
  • Reforming the Dairy Margin Coverage Program and the federal milk pricing formula
  • Requiring state of origin labeling on food so consumers know where it comes from
  • Reducing federal overreach in agricultural policy in favor of greater state and local control

Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District has some of the highest concentrations of small dairy farms in the state. Baum is the only candidate in the race who grew up on one. Baum encourages people to find and attend a dairy breakfast near them this month. Dairy breakfasts can be found here: www.wisconsindairy.org/june-dairy-month/Dairy-Breakfasts