First-generation dairy farmers, Paul Windemuller and family encourage young people who aren’t from farms to get into agriculture.
As the saying goes, fortune favors the bold. Especially in the case of Paul Windemuller, you could argue that “bold” and “first-generation farmer” are one in the same. Yet, while many first-generation business ventures fail in the early years, Windemuller has recently reached the ten-year milestone with his Michigan dairy farm.
As a first-generation farmer, Windemuller is no stranger to agriculture and dairy business. Growing up in West Michigan, his family owned a farm equipment dealership. While other young kids would head home or off to extra-curriculars after school, Windemuller was headed over to the dealership. It was there that he would do his homework, spend his weekends, and ultimately develop a passion for entrepreneurship in agriculture.
“I met a bunch of different farmers, got immersed in agriculture through that, and worked on several different dairy farms through high school, and I really enjoyed that,” Windemuller says. “My brother and I grew vegetables – seven acres of fresh produce that we sold in the summer times. It was just a very entrepreneurial family. I always had that in my blood and always wanted to farm.”
When Windemuller decided to study agribusiness management at Michigan State, it was with a clear vision and goal to own a dairy. During college, he met a girl who shared that dream and would become his wife. He spent a semester studying abroad in New Zealand, and he and his wife spent another year there following graduation. There, Windemuller gained a valuable mentor and worked for a family farm, learning the business principles that he would use to start his own operation.
By May of 2014, the Windemullers were back in Michigan as the proud owners of a 150-year-old farmstead that became home to their first 30 cows, which were leased from a neighbor who was overcrowded.
Today, after a series of carefully calculated risks, investments and partnerships, the family milks 250 cows with four robots, and employs a full-time herd manager. Windemuller says the path from 30 cows in a home-made parlor to a robotic milking operation wasn’t always easy. In those hard times, fortune wasn’t favoring the bold or the first-generation farmer. It was faith that got them through.
Having scaled his dairy to a profitable position, Windemuller is, in a lot of ways, just getting started. Like most entrepreneurs, he is multi-passionate. He’s involved in leadership for Dairy Farmers of America (DFA), is a Nuffield Scholar, and runs his own podcast, called Ag Culture.
“I think it’s really important for people to be involved in their own business if they can,” Windemuller says. “It’s not for everybody, but it’s one thing that makes America different and great is that so many people are willing to pull up their bootstraps and add value through that. Every farm is really an entrepreneurial enterprise, and I see the impact that it can have on communities, families and our country. It’s just really important to keep that alive, build resiliency in local and rural economies not just in the U.S. but around the world.”
Through his work with his employees, DFA, the Nuffield Scholar program, Windemuller is making waves in entrepreneurship and agriculture at local, national and global levels.
The local impact starts with his employees. Like Paul, The Windemullers’ herd manager was not from a farm, and has ambitions of owning her own business. “She’s got animals here of her own, doing some stuff with genetics and wants to have a business around that. We’re working with her to help her build her business from our farm,” Windemuller says. “That’s another thing we try to do is encourage young people that aren’t from farms to get into agriculture.”
At a national level, Windemuller got involved in DFA right away when he started milking. He says it was a lack of young people involved in decision-making and leadership roles that drove him to step in. “I’m hoping to have a long career in dairy farming, and these organizations should be led by both people that have years of wisdom, but also people that have many years ahead of them, to give a long-term perspective on the decisions being made,” Windemuller says.
The Nuffield Scholar program and the Ag Culture podcast are taking Windemuller’s efforts to the global level. The topic he proposed is “How can artificial intelligence be integrated into ruminant livestock production to make the industry more resilient into the future?”. To find the answers, he’s traveling the world and sharing the experiences of the people he meets on his podcast. The results of his study will be a catalyst for conversations with legislators to influence local and national policy.
Windemuller says a lot of doors are opening because of the podcast and the scholarship. “I don’t know what else beyond this farm we’ll end up doing yet, but I think there’ll be some other opportunities,” he says. “But for this operation that’s a good size, just works with the land base that we have available to us, and with the help that we have.”
Fortune may favor the bold, but for Windemuller, fortune has favored the teamwork, perseverance and faith. “It’s a good farm manager, a good assistant, a great wife,” he says. “Find out what really lights up your passion, focus on that, and figure out how to work with other people that will come around you and within their passions to accomplish something great together.”
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