Bio: Luchterhand, Bryce (Farmer addresses legislation 1983)

Contact: Kathleen E. Englebretson

Email: kathy@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Luchterhand, Chilsen, Earl, La Follette, Eumurian, Gilson

----Source: Marshfield News-Herald (15 September 1983)

MADISON -- A lawmaker and songwriter told a legislative committee Wednesday that milk is a natural choice as Wisconsin's state beverage.

Another Legislator and a Clark County farmer, however, said the dairy industry had more pressing concerns than whether milk is the state beverage.

Promoting milk as the state beverage was Sen. Walter John Chilsen, R-Wausau and singer Daniel Eumurian of Viroqua. (edited)

The committee also heard testimony from Bryce Luchterhand, Unity who urged that the Legislature, Gov. Earl and Attorney Bronson LaFollette challenge the federal government's $1 per hundredweight milk assessment.

"There is a notion that a dairy surplus is a bad thing," Luchterhand said. "Two-thirds of the people in the world are hungry -- it'd be hard to convince them that it is a bad thing. A surplus in agriculture is not bad."

Last April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture began a 50-cent per hundredweight assessment to reduce the dairy surplus. Another 50-cent assessment was implemented September 1.

"I traveled 150 miles to urge you to use your very powerful influence to instruct your attorney general to attack this in court,: he said, calling the assessment "Discriminatory, unduly burdensome and illegal," as well as a threat to a dairy farmer's livelihood.

The attorney general's office said last week that any legal action against the tax would be unproductive.

The hearing was supposed to concern Assembly Joint Resolution 41, which was drafter last May by Rep. Earl Gibson, D-River Falls, to condemn the first 50-cent assessment. Gilson said he had wanted something done when the first assessment was implemented, not four months later.

While he agreed that milk was an appropriate state beverage, Gilson said, "Maybe we need a state beverage, but at the time when issues are so very important, you wonder about wasting the time."