Daniel Walton
Civil Eats
Ben Wagner may be a dairy farmer, but that job description is woefully incomplete. He’s also an accountant, squaring the numbers for his central Minnesota farm by hand; a herder, rotating 75 cows between pastures; a crop farmer, raising 300 acres of feed like corn and hay; and a mechanic, repairing the equipment necessary to tend that acreage.
It’s a lot for anyone to handle, Wagner admits, especially for a man approaching his 66th birthday. Thankfully, he has a capable and energetic partner, 25-year-old Jack Schouweiler. Schouweiler, who started out milking cows for Wagner as a teenager and now owns the farm’s herd, has plans to eventually buy the rest of the operation.
On a typical workday, Wagner rises to feed the calves, while Schouweiler milks the cows. Afterward, they turn the herd out onto organically managed pasture, where the animals eat freely from clover, alfalfa, and a blend of perennial grasses like meadow bromegrass, orchard grass, and fescue. Their “got a minute?” check-ins often turn into half-hour conversations on the finer points of rotational grazing or organic pest treatments.
“He’s full of questions, full of curiosity and a lot of drive,” Wagner says. “Sometimes he feels almost like he’s my son, even though we’re not related in any way, shape, or form.”
Pastured dairy farms like Wagner’s are declining at a rate of 5 to 10 percent every year, as older farmers retire without a successor. Meanwhile, new dairy farmers typically can’t afford to buy land or dairy cows. That’s bad news for an industry that could be providing milk, cheese, and other products that are not only nutritious but also good for the land and climate.
Enter the Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship. Since 2015, the DGA, supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has worked to help dairy farmers like Wagner transfer their skills, and potentially their businesses, to a new generation. Nearly 70 apprentices have graduated from the program as independent journeyworkers so far, and 59 farmer-apprentice pairs are currently active across the country, helping ensure a future for grazing dairy cows—and for their benefits to local economies and ecosystems.
The USDA is supporting other elements of the apprenticeship, including research into better understanding the climate benefits of grazed dairy, but it is unclear whether that will move forward under the Trump administration, which is by and large unsupportive of climate initiatives. Either way, dairy graziers—from mentors to mentees—are working to expand the industry and save small farms.
The Benefits of Pastured Dairy
Pasture-based dairies, defined by USDA researchers as those where cows get at least half of their forage from pasture during the grazing season, are a comparative rarity in the United States—just 16 percent of the country’s dairy farms. The majority of the country’s 9.3 million milk cows are raised in herds of 1,000 or more, primarily or entirely confined indoors.
The biggest farms can secure the best interest rates on credit, buy inputs at lower bulk rates, and trim labor costs through technology like robotic milking systems and calf feeders. Those advantages have pushed consolidation, causing over 95 percent of the country’s dairy farms to close since 1970.
Jack Schouweiler, left, a dairy apprentice, partners with dairy farmer Ben Wagner, and plans to someday buy the operation from Wagner. (Photo courtesy of Minnesota Board of Water and Soil Resources)
But having fewer, larger dairies is not ideal. Such consolidation is susceptible to market shocks like those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, often relies on intensive inputs like antibiotics and imported feed, and may emit more greenhouse gases to produce the same amount of milk.
Grazed-dairy operations, on the other hand, can benefit ecosystems, rural communities, and consumer health. Carefully managed grazing, in which cows are rotated through paddocks of perennial grasses, can build soil organic matter and absorb climate-warming carbon dioxide through the grasses’ extensive root systems.
Also, because grazing dairies are generally smaller than confinement dairies, they typically buy more supplies from local businesses, contributing roughly 20 percent more to rural economic development, says Joe Tomandl III, who is DGA’s executive director and the owner of three grass-based dairies in Wisconsin.
What’s more, milk from grass-fed cows contains higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, which help reduce inflammation, as well as more trace phytonutrients that may have anticancer properties.
Teaching new graziers—farmers who graze cows—is the foundation of realizing those benefits, Tomandl adds. Most land-grant agriculture programs focus on confinement systems, given their prevalence in the industry, so the DGA is one of the few sources that shares pasture-raised dairy skills.
No Shortage of New Graziers
Apprentices in the DGA come from all walks of life, says Jessica Matthews, who manages the program. A graduate herself, she came to the program from the social work field. Some participants are already working in dairy but want to deepen their knowledge and commitment to a grazing approach.
“There tend to be waves of folks that are looking for a second career option, or are maybe burning out in what their chosen profession was, and are interested in doing something that’s closer to working with their hands or working with the land,” Matthews says.
The DGA also recently launched a Spanish-language version of the program, in recognition that over half of the country’s dairy workforce are immigrants, many of them Spanish-speaking. Their participation in the program, let alone in the dairy industry as a whole, might be impacted by immigration policies under the new Trump administration, although it’s too early to know for sure.
Interest in the program is strong: The DGA has 59 apprentices and 120 active apprentice candidates. And with 215 approved mentors, there’s capacity to absorb even more would-be graziers.
Jessica Matthews, DGA program manager. (Photo courtesy of Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship)
Many apprentices find the program through online searches rather than traditional agricultural networks. Amber Donaldson had been interested in farming since formative childhood vacations to her grandmother’s farmhouse in rural Pennsylvania, and was raising chickens and rabbits on her own homestead while working day jobs in food service. She stumbled across the DGA website when looking up opportunities for first-generation dairy farmers and has since apprenticed with two Pennsylvania pasture-based operations.
Her first apprenticeship, with mentor grazier Jeff Biddle at Bear Meadows Farm, threw her into a demanding daily routine. Without any previous dairy experience, she was immediately helping milk up to 50 cows a day, bottle-feeding baby calves, and wrestling with wet bales of feed hay in the mid-Atlantic winter. At the same time, she was taking online classes through the Managed Grazing Innovation Center, the program’s academic component, covering topics like agricultural ecology and soil health.
Despite the hard work and often 16-hour days, she fell in love with the dairy life. “It was the most rewarding experience—every day just waking up, coming outside, and working with cows was the best day ever,” Donaldson says. “Before I started working, I kind of thought my approach toward cows and wanting to have that relationship was naive and unrealistic. But I’ve gotten to see that there are farmers out there that value a really personal relationship with each animal.”
After 18 months at Bear Meadows, Donaldson decided to broaden her experience by working with Dave and Terry Rice of Clover Creek Cheese Cellar. She learned a different approach to rotational grazing, as well as the basics of cheesemaking, and now hopes to use what she’s learned to start a dairy business of her own.
Milking the Market
Given the current state of the U.S. commodity dairy industry, where profit margins for milk have been slim or even negative for many years, apprentice graziers need to learn more than just how to raise cows. Mentors help their mentees identify more sustainable paths to running a dairy business, whether through creating value-added products like Clover Creek cheese or selling into the specialty organic market, as Ben Wagner does.
Jack Schouweiler, deep in the milking parlor at Ben Wagner’s farm. (Photo courtesy of Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship)
The DGA is supporting those explorations by building a sustainable market for pasture-fed milk, says Tomandl. The organization recently launched a new effort, the Dairy Grazing Alliance, that brings together more than 35 farmers, consumer brands, government agencies, and financial institutions to strengthen the pastured-dairy supply chain. Tomandl envisions creating hubs of small farms, each managed by a graduate of the DGA, that could provide nationally distributed milk brands with the volume they require.
Another initiative, a nearly $4.8 million study backed by the USDA’s Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities, aims to help mentors and apprentices communicate the environmental value of their milk. The research uses a sonar system called PaddockTrac, pulled over the fields by an all-terrain vehicle, to measure the growth of grass in pastures and correlate it with carbon sequestration and other ecosystem benefits. Graziers can then take the data to potential milk buyers.
The work has immediate on-farm benefits as well, says Tomandl. “The farmer gets management data on how this farm is growing.” The apprentice benefits too, with “an accelerated learning curve on how these grazing wedges are set up and how to better manage the grass on the dairy. It goes hand in hand.” Plus, participating mentors receive a stipend to help pay apprentice wages.
It’s unclear how the research, slated to continue through 2028, might be impacted by the Trump administration. Its funding was authorized by former Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, not earmarked by Congress. Brooke Rollins, Trump’s nominee to head the USDA, has denied the scientific consensus that carbon dioxide emissions are planet-heating pollutants.
“While we cannot predict how a new administration might approach this initiative, we believe in maintaining its momentum,” says Aaron Shier, government relations director for the National Farmers Union, which represents more than 200,000 farms and ranches across the country. Continuity across administrations, he adds, means farmers can see their projects through to completion, enabling them to learn from the results and adapt to new situations.
Earning the Trust
Meanwhile, the DGA wants to ensure that existing grazing operations aren’t lost to development or snapped up by large confinement dairies. The average age of a U.S. farmer is 58, and many graziers don’t have family members willing to continue their operations. Apprentices with deep skills and existing relationships with farmers, Matthews says, are perfectly positioned to fill that gap. About a third of the program’s graduates to date have either taken over the farm on which they apprenticed or are working toward that goal.
Even under the best of circumstances, admits Matthews, it can be challenging for long-time farmers to give up their work. “If they stand at the same place every single day to load a bailer, the concrete has an imprint of the boots that they wear,” she says. “They’re so intricately involved in farming that the mental shift to not farm anymore is really daunting.” To help prepare retiring farmers and apprentices, the DGA recently received another USDA grant to develop best practices for facilitating farm transfers.
Ben Wagner feels a touch of that challenge as he grapples with the changeover of his Minnesota farm to his apprentice Schouweiler. He’s watched as the younger man has added new equipment and pursued new ways of doing things, and he’s still getting used to his new schedule after Schouweiler took over milking duties.
And though the finances of the gradual transfer aren’t as lucrative as a quick sale to an outside investor, Wagner wouldn’t have it any other way. After 20 years of careful pasturing, he’s seen the farm’s soil grow softer and richer, and he’s watched as gophers and earthworms have returned to the land. “Somebody else would come in here with big four-wheel drives and destroy everything, all the soil and all that we’ve build up on it, in three years,” he says.
Instead, Wagner trusts that Schouweiler will continue his legacy of organic, pasture-raised dairy and preserve the soil. He’s grateful for the opportunity to keep his farm in the hands of someone with the same love of the land.
“I would do it over again in a heartbeat, because you see the look on his face,” Wagner says. “There’s a peace, an inner peace, in knowing that somebody’s dream came true. And he’s living the dream.”
Daniel Walton is a freelance journalist based in Western North Carolina covering the environment, sustainability, and political news. His work has appeared in national and regional publications including Sierra, The Guardian, and Ambrook Research. Read more >