Landon and Anne Plagge begin using cover crops on their farm in 2012 when conditions prevented them from planting cash crops on 500 acres. They immediately noticed the benefits of cover crops the following year and scaled up to using no-till and cover crops on all of their 4,000 acres. Oats were a large part of their cover crop program. Fast forward to 2020 and they began planting oats as a cash crop for food and seed markets. Oats had a number of benefits for their farming operation: the crop spread out workload through the season, enabled the Plagges to plant a diverse cover crop mix in the summer, and lowered their inputs (and costs) across their entire cropping rotation. The problem became marketing - there were limited options in the Upper Midwest to get a consistent, fair price for oats and have it remain an economically viable alternative to corn and soybeans.
In 2022 they began discussions around building an oat mill. In 2023 Green Acres Milling became incorporated with a mission to create a new oat market that prioritized local farmers and communities while delivering regeneratively grown ingredients. They talked with hundreds of farmers across the Upper Midwest who faced similar marketing woes and over 130 farmer came to the table to invest in the mill's construction. The facility broke ground in 2025 and finished construction in 2026.
