2024 CPDE Expo – March 20

Free Ag Prayer Breakfast for 2024

6:30 AM – Doors Open to the Sanford Premier Center
6:30 AM – Breakfast Buffet Service
7:00 AM – Program Begins

 


 

Merrill and Marlys Nettinga

This year’s Central Plains Dairy Expo Ag Prayer Breakfast features the Merrill and Marlys Nettinga family of M&M Dairy, Hull, Iowa. Merrill Nettinga will share his faith-based journey and describe how the grace of God has helped his family build a sustainable farm business.

The free breakfast includes a hot breakfast buffet, plus yogurt, fruit, coffee and milk, and time devoted to prayer and reflection. Generous sponsors help offset the breakfast’s costs. If you’d like to make a monetary donation during the breakfast, proceeds will go to the Western Iowa Dairy Alliance’s (WIDA) Banquet Ministry. This group purchases numerous dairy foods for the meals and people they serve.

 

 

 

 

Ashley & Ellie

Ashley & Ellie will provide spirit lifting music at the prayer breakfast this year. Ashley Egdorf is from Sioux Center, Iowa, where she resides with her husband, David, and their three daughters. She works part time as content coordinator for Text In Church. Ashley loves all things outdoors, singing and leading worship. A Montana native, Ellie Waring grew up on a farm and now lives in Sioux Center, Iowa, with her husband, Colton, and two children.  She is the creative director at RISE Ministries. Ellie is so grateful for the way God has used music in her life. This duo regularly leads worship at the New Life Church in Sioux Center, Iowa. Occasionally, they provide music for the “Mom Event,” which is a community event for young mothers.

 

 

 


About the Nettinga family

 

M&M Dairy’s history dates back to the 1940s when Garret Nettinga bought the farm. Following deployment from the Korean War, Garret’s son, Morris, bought the farm and began farming. He added beef cows and switched to dairy cows in the 1960s.

Morris and Vergie Nettinga grew their farm and had seven children. One child – Merrill – expressed interest in the farm. Merrill married Marlys in 1985 and took over the farm shortly thereafter, due to his father’s untimely death. They have two sons, Michael and Mitchell. Michael works for Lely and is married to Kylie, who is the new Western Iowa Dairy Alliance executive director and former agriculture instructor at Western Christian High School in Hull, Iowa. Mitchell is married to Amber. Michael and Mitchell are the fourth generation to be a part of this family farm.

Today, M&M Dairy is composed of 100 Holstein cows and 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans. Farm improvements have included new barns, a shop, silage pad, lagoon and a herringbone milking parlor built in the early 2000s. Recently, the family installed two robotic milkers.

For crop production, they use minimum tillage methods and cultivate in the spring. This past year, they tried their first round of cover crops.

All are welcome to the free CPDE 2024 Ag Prayer Breakfast on Wednesday, March 20, 2024 at the Denny Sanford Premier Center in Sioux Falls, S.D.