Northeast Agribusiness and Feed Alliance Board of Directors member Jenny Mills has been a part of the agricultural fabric of the Northeast since she was a child, growing up on a dairy farm in central New York. Mills currently works as the strategic marketing dairy industry lead for Provimi North America, the premix and nutrition business subsidiary of Cargill. Prior to that, Mills worked for Elanco Animal Health for fifteen years, straight from graduating from Cornell University with a masters in calf nutrition in 2004.
Mills’ love of agriculture comes from her desire to help feed the world. “Working to help improve dairy feeding practices and provide education to the agricultural industry in general is all about feeding the world,” said Mills. “There’s going to be about 2 billion more people by 2050, and we have to figure out how to feed them on the same resources we have today.”
At Provimi, Mills works with dairy innovations. “We work to see how do we bring these innovations to the market, make business plans, create sales, etc. to execute this,” said Mills. “We work to improve feed nutrition and create digital technology to allow nutritionists to increase efficiency and have access to the most current information possible.”
While at Elanco, Mills joined NEAFA in 2004, and became a board member approximately 10 years ago. “I really enjoy working with the people in agriculture and the feed industry, as well as serving the industry by helping to promote NEAFA’s core pillars,” said Mills. “Through advocacy, education and collaboration, I enjoy working across all parts of the industry to promote what NEAFA is all about.”
As a board member for NEAFA, Mills is the chair of the communications committee. “I enjoy getting to know all of the different members at NEAFA, learn about their businesses, and then representing them and working with NEAFA to advocate to the state legislature on agriculture’s behalf. Working on the communications committee, I feel that we’ve really brought the brand forward by working on social media, our newsletter, and getting information on the industry out to non-members. There’s always room to improve and continuing to promote our key issues throughout the northeast and beyond.”
Mills still lives in central N.Y with her husband, who is also in the dairy industry. They have two children, Lily and Logan, and both are involved with 4H as well as the Junior Holstein Association. Lily was also the bronze medalist in the juvenile girls figure skating category at the US Figure skating championships this year. Her brother Logan enjoys playing basketball and trainining in taekwondo. “We try to make sure they have a good dose of both agriculture and non-agricultural activities growing up.”