The state of Wisconsin is losing its dairy farms at a troubling rate.

As time goes on, more and more Wisconsin dairy farmers are going out of business in what is being described as a crisis in America’s dairy heartland.

The dairy industry in Wisconsin has been struggling for a long time now, but the situation has reached the point of panic. “The dairy industry has been struggling for a while, but now the problem has become acute and we must act and we must act now,” said Dean Wayne Weber at the University of Wisconsin at Platteville. Dairy farms have been dropping like flies at a rate of almost two per day in Wisconsin, totaling 700 dairy farm closures in 2018.

Despite the grim outlook for the dairy industry, many academics in Wisconsin are keen to find a solution to the problem. The state is providing research money to colleges which will be used to create the first-ever “dairy innovation hub.” The new hub will be used to research new dairy products while also looking for newer, less conventional ways to use milk. The idea is very simple, but it’s not so easy to just convince people to buy more milk sourced from Wisconsin. What is feasible, however, is simply finding more ways to use milk. One such use for milk would be adding it to bio-digesters on farms in place of manure when milk is there in excess. This potential fuel-like application of milk could be used to power entire farms, and even local communities.