Upper Midwest (WI/MN focus)

Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship as a succession pipeline

Problem

Aging business owners, farmers, and civic leaders have no succession plans. When they retire or die, businesses close, land sells off, and institutional knowledge disappears.

Solution

Dairy Grazing Apprenticeship (DGA), founded in Wisconsin in 2010 by grazing dairy farmer Joe Tomandl III, is a two-year, 4,000-hour paid apprenticeship registered with the U.S. Department of Labor (3,712 on-farm hours plus 288 hours of related instruction per UVM Extension; DGA's own 2022 release says 3,700 plus 300). In January 2025 Civil Eats reported nearly 70 journeyworker graduates, 59 active farmer-apprentice pairs, 120 apprentice candidates and 215 approved mentors; by March 2025 the program counted 216 mentor farms in 16 states and said a federal funding freeze on its $4.77 million USDA Climate-Smart Commodities grant put it in jeopardy. The apprenticeship has been housed under the Dairy Grazing Alliance since the Alliance's launch in November 2024. The seven-year-lease transition the book places in Minnesota is a Wisconsin case (Hill Creek Farm, Colfax, Dunn County).

Patterns used: Generational Transition Planning