JUNEAU, Wis. – A handful of dairy folks gather to share stories – stories full of passion, hopes and dreams for the future. Somewhere in the tales is birthed a spark of an idea. From one heart and then another comes the idea of a path of sharing. The idea is infused with their culture – a culture of helping, of building, of overcoming and of faith.
The idea becomes an organization – an organization called the Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin. It was 1992, making this year the group’s 25th anniversary.
“There were eight of us,” Al Koepke said. “We all threw some money in the kitty. Our first meeting was in Wisconsin Rapids. Then we moved to Marshfield. We were told nobody would go to a two-day meeting, but we had a two-day meeting. I think 39 people showed up that first year. The second year it was about the same, but the third year we had about 60. The fourth year we had 120 so we moved to Appleton, but we soon outgrew that.”
The exponential growth has continued. The organization, which is based out of little Juneau, now holds its yearly conference in the huge Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Its membership is now at more than 1,700 farms – each of which might have anywhere from a handful of folks to dozens. The actual number of people in the organization is likely in the thousands – and it has also outgrown Wisconsin. In 2016 attendance at the PDPW Business Conference was more than 1,600, from almost every state and several countries.
“When you go to the big conference, there’s a little bug that bites you,” said Shelly Mayer, executive director of PDPW. “You’re with people with the same values, with so much passion, and with that ‘can-do’ attitude. It’s a whole feeling and culture – how to get over it, create solutions, brainstorm. It’s a unique atmosphere. That is that bug, that inoculation.”
It was almost 25 years ago when Mayer, who then worked at East Central Select Sires, was asked if she’d like to do some work on a one-time project that the company was sponsoring. The project soon became a constant part-time task – and then became full-time when Mayer became part of PDPW’s staff. She, too, is a dairy farmer, and so knows fully the challenges of the industry.
“This business is not for the faint of heart,” she said. “You can’t hop in and hop out. If you’re in it just for the pay, it won’t be fulfilling enough to sustain you. You need the faith. You need to be focused on long-term results, especially when the short term can be so challenging. Think of the faith it takes to plant a seed every spring. When you have faith in dairying, and love it, you know it will be fulfilling.”
But as much as these farmers love their animals and love their land, PDPW’s founders knew the only it way it would be a good way of life is if it’s also a good business.
“We were just coming out of the farm crisis of the early 1980s,” said founder John Kappelman. “The entire upper-Midwest dairy industry was in a hunker-down mode, just trying to survive. People weren’t feeling good about the industry. If the industry was going to survive, our skills had to blossom and grow. We needed to go from being introverts to working with people. Cattle skills weren’t going to be enough. We need to be able to think outside the box – the box we had painted ourselves into.”
What they needed to do was communicate with others, and also to decide the organization’s purpose.
“It was decided we were not going to be lobbyists, but just educators,” Koepke said. “Not to compete with Extension – we wanted to provide what Extension couldn’t.”
To this day, that is the organization’s focus. This year’s Business Conference has 74 speakers and panelists, four keynote sessions, 25 breakout and specialty sessions, 15 learning-lounge sessions, 12 new-research previews and five hands-on learning sessions.
“Information and education are just critical,” Kappelman said. “That’s a constant.”
At the beginning, finding information and resources was difficult.
“It was really a seat-of-the-pants start,” said founder Pete Knigge. “We were crawling before we could walk. But people had a common vision – wanting the dairy industry to grow and succeed.”
The vision needed the right mix of people – a mix they began with and added to.
“It’s part of our culture,” Kappelman said. “After working in Europe and around the world, I appreciate our culture. Go back in upper-Midwest history. Look at the wood-frame barns that were built by communities. This is the only place these are owned by the common people and not aristocracy. This is part of the American dream. That’s the culture that our farm families were born out of and come from.
“Elements of that culture still exist today. You ask a dairy farmer how he does that and he’ll tell you everything. What other industries are like that? One of the reasons I work with the (PDPW) Foundation is I’m concerned to keep those elements alive. We have the dairy industry we have today because of that culture.”
And that is the whole reason for the organization.
“That’s my life goal,” Koepke said. “To help others succeed.”
Visit www.pdpw.org for more information.
By: Julie Belschner
Source: Agri-View