Larry Bailey along with his wife Amy, in-laws Leon & Sally Walker, and brother-in-law Aaron Walker own and operate Walker Farms LLC in Fort Ann, NY. A dairy operation home to 1,500 dairy cows. 1,100 replacements are housed at a separate location 7 miles away. Walker Farms operates 3,000 acres of land. The dairy owns and operates a methane digester where we produce electricity along with separated solids that we use as a bedding source for the dairy. Larry and Amy’s son Garrett returned home and has been running the dairy portion of the operation since 2023.
Larry is currently the Chairman of New York Dairy Promotion Order and the local FSA county committee. In addition he serves on the DFA Northeast and Corporate resolutions committee. He has served as a past Northeast and Corporate DFA board member. Along with their son, Larry and Amy have two daughters, Molly & Kayla.
Brian McGarry is a second-generation dairy farmer located in Northern Vermont. Brian joined the operation with his parents in 2018 after graduating from Virginia Tech. The farm currently milk about 140 cows, in addition to 220 acres of crops.
Brian serves on Agri-Mark’s Sustainable Farms Committee, as well as the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council. He also participated in the development of the Ruminant Farm System (RuFaS) model that powers FARM ES Version 3.
Suzanne Vold is a dairy farmer from Glenwood, MN. Suzanne, her husband Brad, and Brad’s brother Greg are the owners of Dorrich Dairy, a 500-cow dairy that converted to robotic milking in 2019. The operation includes approximately five hundred acres of cropland which supplies the forage and grain to the dairy. In 2015 their farm was honored to receive a National Sustainability Award from the U.S. Center for Dairy Innovation.
Suzanne received her BA in Mathematics and Economics from Wellesley College and her MBA from the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. She is a director on local, state, regional and national dairy promotion boards, and she is currently chair of the DMI board Sustainability Committee. She also serves on the Environmental Stewardship and the Stewardship Commitment committees for the Innovation Center for US Dairy and has served on Innovation Center Task Forces on Regenerative Agriculture, Biodiversity, Net Zero Initiative Goals and Measurement, GHG Protocol Land Sector Removals Feedback, and GHG Protocol Corporate Standards and Guidance Updates. Suzanne and Brad have three children: Anna (25), Erik (22), and Katy (18).
Steve Schlangen has been a member of the Associated Milk Producers Inc. (AMPI) Board of Directors since 2001 and was the chairman from 2011 – 2024. He also has served on the National Milk Producers Federation Board of Directors. Steve and his wife Cheryl operate a 65-cow dairy farm with a robotic milking system near Albany, Minn.
The Schlangens have participated in the NRCS Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) since 2005. In 2016, the Schlangens became certified through the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program (MAWQCP). The Schlangens were the sole farmer participants on the start-up committee that became the Headwaters Agriculture Sustainability Partnership (HASP). The program was formalized in 2018 and is focused on implementing farmer-led conservation projects. They are also among early adopters in the Ecosystem Services Market Consortium, an initiative focused on gathering research to develop ecosystem service markets to pay farmers for adopting practices that protect the environment across the agricultural landscape.
The couple was honored with the Outstanding Dairy Farm Sustainability Award from the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy in 2022. They have four grown children and five grandchildren.
Brandon Clark serves as the Sustainability Manager at United Dairymen of Arizona (UDA), where he leads initiatives to embed sustainability across the cooperative. His focus spans from optimizing farm-level operations to ensuring environmentally responsible practices within UDA’s manufacturing facilities, driving a cohesive and impactful sustainability strategy throughout the entire supply chain.
Prior to joining UDA, Brandon worked at Boeing as part of the Performance Based Logistics team, focusing on enhancing shipping, transportation, and import efficiencies to support the United States military, both domestically and internationally. Before Boeing, he gained valuable experience in the dairy consumer packaged goods sector at Isagenix, where he managed the worldwide distribution of food products, working closely with suppliers and logistics carriers to optimize supply chain operations.
Brandon holds a bachelor’s degree in supply chain management, which he leverages to enhance sustainable practices for UDA’s members, suppliers, and customers. His unique expertise in supply chain logistics and supplier sustainability enables him to create impactful strategies that benefit the entire cooperative.
