The Chairman: How a Plan To Develop Wisconsin’s Largest Pig Farm Upended a Small Town’s Politics

A proposal for a $20 million concentrated animal feeding operation sowed distrust in Trade Lake as opponents accused the town’s chairman of backroom dealings to facilitate construction.

During a frigid January evening, the businessman pitched his vision for the northwest Wisconsin town. He handed out cards — looking for anyone interested in selling him land.

Only seven people attended the board of Trade Lake’s first monthly meeting of 2019, so few realized the businessman sought to construct a swine farm. As they would later learn, the $20 million project, known as Cumberland LLC, could house up to 26,350 animals — the largest pig breeding operation within the state and, potentially, the Midwest.

Not long after, the town’s chairman, Jim Melin, called the businessman and told him he had property that might serve the company’s purposes.

The exchange and later dealings would mire Melin in legal controversy as Trade Lake residents organized to prevent construction of the livestock farm — also known as a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.

“There was no whatchamacallit that said I couldn’t sell the land to somebody,” Melin would later testify in a sworn deposition. “There is no law that says I can’t sell the land — ag land to an ag enterprise.”