Meet Leaders of the Land® Sawyer and Jillian Tietz

This story was republished with permission.

[Link]Jillian (left) and Sawyer Tietz stand in the freestall barn Jan. 7 at Idle Gold Guernseys near Comstock, Wisconsin.

As they work to find their place in agriculture and the dairy industry while also transitioning into ownership of their family's Polk County dairy farm, Sawyer and Jillian Tietz have big dreams and goals for their future.

"Farming today is difficult - the banks tell us you have to have 500-1,000 cows or diversify to continue," Jillian said. "We want to stay this size and focus on diversification and sustainable practices to create our future."

The Tietzes won the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation's 35 Under 35 Sustainable Future award at the organization's convention in December.

"We thought maybe our plans were too out of this world, but then we applied for this and actually won," Jillian said. "Maybe we're not completely crazy for thinking like this. We have big dreams, but we're realistic, too. We'll be happy if we achieve half our dreams."

In planning for a sustainable future, the Tietzes have capitalized on bringing global ideas to a level that works on their family farm where they milk 140 cows with Jillian's parents, Neil and Janice Jensen, near Comstock.

"There are a million ways to farm," Sawyer said. "People who are more old-school might think we're silly, but we really just want to create a future that is bright for us, for the environment and for agriculture."

After being nominated for the award, the Tietzes needed to develop their own definition of sustainable agriculture.

"To us, sustainability means being good stewards of the land to ensure we have healthy and productive crops to raise healthy and productive cows," Sawyer said. "In return, that will create a happy and healthy farm environment that is necessary for working with and trying to educate both future consumers and future agriculturalists."

The Tietzes approach sustainability from three different directions - the environment, economics and a social aspect.

"For quite a while, farmers didn't do a very good job advocating for themselves," Sawyer said. "We let the public perception of agriculture be what it was and allowed other groups to establish that narrative."

[Link]Jillian and her husband, Sawyer, applied the cash prize from the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation's 35 Under 35 Sustainable Future award towards the purchase of a used Milk Taxi to make calf feeding chores more efficient.

In their quest for sustainability, the Tietzes are hoping technology will serve as their foundation.

"Labor is a big problem with farming, and we think robotics are a good direction for us to take the farm to cut back on labor costs," Jillian said. "We want to be sustainable with the two of us running the farm, with maybe one employee."

The Tietzes are interested in processing their own milk to exercise more control over the marketing of their milk. They plan to start with butter.

"We milk Guernsey cows, we want to capitalize on the value of that milk," Jillian said.

Sawyer will begin working towards the required butter-making certifications this spring, taking classes through the Center for Dairy Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"There are pros and cons to making butter," he said. "There is less initial investment required in machinery and butter is more shelf-stable, giving us more options for marketing. In terms of licensure and learning the process, butter-making has more qualifications than some other processing avenues."

As the Tietzes have pondered how they can build their future, they said they have learned the sky is the limit. They have a goal of building a closed input loop for their farm, rather than purchasing inputs.

"On a lot of farms, the main goal is for production, because the economics are driven by increasing production to increase cash flow," Sawyer said. "We're hoping that with diversification we can make up the income gap, allowing us to focus on really trying to take care of the farm, starting with building the soil ecosystem."

Sawyer plans to experiment with a plot of open-pollinated corn this year, with the goal of eventually growing feed for their herd using their own seed.

"Open-pollinated corn doesn't yield like hybrid corn, but doesn't require the same fertilization," Sawyer said. "I don't believe farms need to push for production. Worldwide, we produce twice the food calories needed to feed the global population - deficiencies are a distribution issue, not a production issue. Why deplete the resource of the soil for something we don't actually need?"

The European farming model is a source of inspiration for Sawyer when it comes to seeking out ways to build sustainability into the farm.

"Some of the things I want to pursue are harder to implement on a small farm scale, here in the U.S.," he said. "I see more sustainable technologies for small farms in Europe, where they have more of a small farm model with more public investment in technologies for small farms."

Large-scale sustainability measures such as manure digesters and bio-diesel reactors are not out of the realm for small farm use, Sawyer said.

"There are digester kits in Europe as small as for 50-cow herds that generate electricity to power the farm and high-nutrient value digestate," he said. "Small-scale bio-diesel reactors produce not only fuel but protein meal as a byproduct, with just the push of a button."

The Tietzes want to help change the narrative that animal agriculture is detrimental to the environment.

"We want to not only dispel that myth but prove the reverse - that animal agriculture and a healthy environment go hand-in-hand," Sawyer said. "We want to see a future for small family farms, to see the land be productive and healthy, to see animals do well and for people to have access to high-quality nutrition."

Small Farm, Big Dreams was written by Danielle Nauman and originally appeared in Dairy Star on January 25. It was repurposed for Wisconsin Farm Bureau with permission from the author.

Leaders of the Land® is Wisconsin Farm Bureau's brand for sharing sustainability stories. Monthly profiles highlight farmers across Wisconsin working hard to meet their environmental, social and economic goals.

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.