FORT BRANCH, Ind. \u2014 Indiana Dairy Producers named its 2026 award winners at its recent annual meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe backbone of Indiana\u2019s dairy industry is the people who show up every day for their herds, their neighbors and their communities,\u201d said Steve Obert, executive director of IDP.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur 2026 honorees \u2014 whether they\u2019ve spent decades serving our industry or are just starting out as scholarship winners \u2014 reflect the commitment and leadership that keep our industry strong.\u201d<\/p>\n
Producer Of The Year<\/p>\n
The Producer of the Year award went to Daniel Hague of Albion in northeast Indiana. He and his wife, Susan, have a 90-cow farm in Noble County.<\/p>\n
The farm has shipped Grade A milk and performed Dairy Herd Improvement Association testing since the early 1980s.<\/p>\n
Hague represents producers on the Indiana State Dairy Association Board, serves as a delegate to the National DHIA meeting and is on the Dairy Records Services advisory board.<\/p>\n
He also serves on several scholarships boards and is involved with local 4-H programs.<\/p>\n
Young Producer Of The Year<\/p>\n
The Young Producer of the Year award was presented to Alex and Abby Lueken of Birdseye in southwestern Indiana.<\/p>\n
Alex is a third-generation dairy farmer with his wife, Abby, and their two small children. They host a Discover Dairy event at the Dubois County Museum for hundreds of people to connect their community with the farm.<\/p>\n
Abby serves as the Adopt a Cow host for Indiana, sharing their calves with over 1,000 classrooms and more than 31,000 students.<\/p>\n
Alex serves on the IDP board to advocate for dairy farming in the state.<\/p>\n
Alan Kuehnert Memorial Scholarship Winner<\/p>\n
Madison Lindauer of Ferdinand in southwest Indiana was awarded the Alan Kuehnert Memorial Scholarship.<\/p>\n
Lindauer is a fifth-generation member of her family\u2019s dairy farm. She is currently studying animal sciences at Western Kentucky University.<\/p>\n
She plans to use her degree to become an animal embryologist to work with dairies on reproductive services.<\/p>\n
IDP Scholarship Winner<\/p>\n
The 2026 IDP Scholarship Winner was Joseph Renners of Borden in southern Indiana.<\/p>\n
Renners is a senior in high school who works four days a week at a local dairy farm. His goal is to be an electrical engineer and someday own his own farm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT BRANCH, Ind. \u2014 Indiana Dairy Producers named its 2026 award winners at its recent annual meeting. \u201cThe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[207,551,552,553,554,555,42,556],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-hague","tag-community","tag-dairy","tag-farm-family-life","tag-livestock","tag-museum","tag-scholarships","tag-the-hague","tag-young-leaders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/netherlands\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}