At the conclusion of last week’s Commodity Classic, Dave Milligan’s presidency of the National Association of Wheat Growers came to an end.
“It’s been two years with the COVID thing, they decided the office should stay another term. We didn’t get our job done the first year, so we needed another year,” he says with a chuckle. “Frankly, we weren’t able to travel, and things were a lot difference. It was a good experience, met a lot of nice people, and I’m going to miss some of those people.”
Milligan farms in Cass City. He says the connections he’s built with lawmakers was instrumental in one of his greatest accomplishments as president.
“A year ago, the climate/sustainability issues started to really come to the forefront, and we hadn’t addressed that as an organization,” says Milligan. “We appointed a committee to work on that—they were meeting every two weeks because we really needed to study this and get our position. Of course it’s a moving target—this is a long way from coming to a conclusion.”
Volatility in the wheat market has been making headlines the last several weeks. Milligan says these violent swings tell an untold story.
“We don’t know where this thing’s going,” he says. “That shows that there may not be as much surplus in the world as everybody thinks there is. When we have a hiccup in one area—of course a war being a pretty big hiccup—it shows how fragile this market can be.”
Milligan won’t be off the board completely. He will be stepping into the past-president role as Nicole Berg of Washington state takes his place.
“It’ll be a little different watching somebody else, but it’ll be alright. It’s in good hands,” he says with a smile.
