A Young Farmer Takes Up the Mantle of Sustainability
Stewarding the health of the soil and surrounding environment is a legacy that has been passed down for generations in the Milligan family. While sustainability is not new to the farm, Mike Milligan, 23, — a fourth generation farmer with 4,000 acres of wheat, edible dry beans, corn, and soybeans—is committed to advancing his family’s sustainability legacy. Like many young farmers, Mike recognizes his responsibility to continue the great sustainability work conceived by generations of farmers before him. He is focused on improving the conservation systems established by his father and grandfather using new technologies and agricultural techniques that enhance his stewardship of the land.
After graduating from Purdue University in 2015 with his Bachelor of Science degree in farm management, Mike returned to his family’s farm in Cass City, Michigan, equipped with skills to manage the production, financial, marketing, and management strategies for the farm. In order to tackle the challenge of feeding the world’s growing population with fewer inputs, while also preserving his farm for future generations, Mike has been exploring new management practices that reduce the farm’s overall environmental footprint, particularly in regards to improved soil health, decreased greenhouse gas emissions, and efficient management of nutrients. Although for Mike, the role of the modern farmer extends beyond his physical duties in the fields. Mike believes farmers have a responsibility to educate consumers about where their food is coming from and how it is being produced.
Continuing a Legacy of Conservation
Conservation has always played an important role on the Milligan farm. For years, Mike and his father David Milligan, a farmer with more than 40 years of experience, have been practicing three to four-year crop rotations which bring many sustainability benefits to the farm, especially in the area of soil health. One of the most prevalent conservation practices across the Milligan farm is a rotation of frost seeding clover as a cover crop, which helps protect the productive capacity of the ecosystem.
“By building organic matter and helping the soil, we are securing our soil health for the rest of our lifetimes and down the line,” explained Mike.
In 2015, Mike began to explore how he could advance the farm’s sustainability practices even further and joined the Kellogg’s Origins™ Great Lakes Wheat Fieldprint Project. As part of the program, Mike started using the Fieldprint® Platform to measure his sustainability performance in order to generate a more comprehensive assessment of his farm’s environmental footprint. The data derived from the Fieldprint Platform has given Mike a way to track continuous improvement on sustainability indicators and monitor the efficiency of the sustainability practices he utilizes to assess what is working and where opportunities for advancement may exist.
“The Fieldprint Platform is dual purpose. First, it is a good way to visualize how you’re performing, and gives you an easy way to look at indicators like carbon footprint. But I would say the biggest benefit is just having some benchmark to gauge yourself against. You can see how you’re performing compared to other farmers and use the data to track your improvement,” emphasized Mike.
Mike Milligan
4th Generation Farmer
Cass City, Michigan
Exploring New Practices
Although Mike is early in his journey of stewarding the family farm’s legacy, he is already providing a fresh take on how to improve the farm’s environmental footprint. Learnings from the Fieldprint Platform have inspired Mike to examine new conservation practices beyond the Milligans conservation efforts with crop rotations and cover crops. He is currently exploring the use of conservation tillage to increase erosion resistance and organic matter inputs.
“Since I graduated college two years ago, I’ve started looking at switching the wetter fields to strip-tillage to save moisture in the summer,” said Mike. “Strip-tillage means lower rates of re-fertilization and fertilization use efficiency for each crop. As long as you can incorporate strip-till with the path you were already making across the field, the result will be better fertilizer replacement, ultimately decreasing the carbon footprint and cutting back on tillage costs.”
Consumer Connection
As a young farmer, Mikes shares many values with Millennial consumers his age, including a focus on efficient energy use, mitigating his carbon footprint, and preserving the land. For this reason, Mike is using his passion for farming and his role as a steward of the environment as a platform to engage consumers in a conversation about agricultural sustainability and their shared-concern for environmental conservation.
As a result of participating in the Kellogg’s Origins™ Great Lakes Wheat Fieldprint Project, Mike has had the opportunity to work more closely with agronomic experts to better understand how the farm’s management practices impact key sustainability outcomes. Mike uses the insights gained from the Fieldprint Platform and collaboration with peers and these experts to communicate his sustainability performance to downstream customers like Kellogg, and ultimately, the end consumer.
“We can say we use cover crops, but that really doesn’t mean a whole lot to the average consumer. This gives them a big picture on how the farm is doing and what farmers are doing in general,” explained Mike.
In September of 2015, Mike became a member of the Tuscola County, Michigan, Farm Bureau, where he promotes and educates the community, his peers, and local government leaders about the issues facing the agricultural community, and how farmers are propelling the industry forward. Mike encourages farmers to use their learnings from data measurement tools such as the Fieldprint Platform to demonstrate for consumers how innovation and technological advancements are helping improve the farm’s efficiency and sustainability.
“The Fieldprint Platform gives us another way to look at benefits and explain your sustainability performance. See if you can improve your yield and your economic possibilities while you’re increasing environmental benefits to the farm,” emphasized Mike. “The consumer drives agriculture and what we do. This is one step towards giving ourselves some sort of feedback and interaction with the consumer at the farm level.”
“The Fieldprint Platform is dual purpose. First, it is a good way to visualize how you’re performing, and gives you an easy way to look at indicators like carbon footprint. But I would say the biggest benefit is just having some benchmark to gauge yourself against.”
Mike Milligan
4th Generation Farmer
Cass City, Michigan
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