REMUS, Mich. – After graduating from college, Karl Wernette returned to the family farm but later acquired his own land to carry on as a fifth-generation cattleman.

Wernette has since more than tripled the size of his herd. He also has about five times the amount of land, including a pasture for his grazing beef cattle to help save on feed costs.

Wernette, 33, along with his wife Katie, 35, are the winners of this year’s Young Farmer Achievement Award from Michigan Farm Bureau.

He said the award is especially gratifying because of the hard work involved in growing and adding diversity to his operation in just over decade.

“It’s quite the honor to be selected for this. It’s nice to be recognized,” he said.

The Wernettes, through purchasing and renting, have close to 3,300 acres now, including a pasture and a field of cover crops for his grazing cattle to consume except during winter when their cows are moved inside and given traditional feed.

The feed, in the form of corn, soybeans, wheat and alfalfa hay, is grown on nearly 800 of the acres.

Some of their land shares a fence line with his dad’s farm that he grew up on outside Remus, which is about 60 miles north of Grand Rapids.

“I spent a lot of time growing up riding on the fender with my dad, walking pastures, checking cows and looking at crops. There’s never been a question that this is what I want to do,” he said.

Katie, who grew up on a hobby farm in the thumb region of the state with a small number of sheep and hogs to show during competitions, is an agriscience teacher at nearby Alma High School.

Her contributions to the operation include servicing customers who can order packaged cuts of beef online with pick-up at the farm.

The Wernettes, who met through mutual friends while attending Michigan State University, have been married for five years and now have three children with the oldest being 4 years old.

Karl worked for about two years on the family farm after returning from MSU with a bachelor’s degree in crop and animal science.

Eventually, he began purchasing land from nearby places like old dairies that went out of business and renting ground from landowners no longer wanting to farm.

He started with 120 cows on close to 700 acres of ground.

The couple now has upward of 1,000 cows, including calves belonging to other farmers that he raises until finish along with the calves born at the farm that he keeps until they’re ready for slaughter.

Wernette also hosts and manages the Bull Evaluation program sponsored through a partnership by MSU and the Michigan Cattlemen’s Association.

Under the program, he is given registered bulls from farmers in parts of the Midwest and through a formulated diet tries to obtain the growth desired before they’re sold at auction.

Wernette said there were 96 bulls in the program this year. 

“Anybody buying bulls out of there can be pretty confident that they’re getting some superior genetics in bulls that have been third party verified,” he said.

Wernette is also involved with a research trial by Michigan State University on whether his grazing management practices impact the amount of carbon emissions absorbed into his soil or if any of the carbon emissions are released from the ground.

He uses a tool with sensors that measures the influx of carbon at his farm.

Wernette said he believes they were chosen for the award mostly from the growth that’s occurred at the farm in relatively quick fashion along with efficiencies and diversity added to make the operation more of a money maker.

“We’ve added a lot more enterprises than just straight out farming,” he said.

Katie, whose father was also an agriscience teacher, gave some of the credit for their success to Michigan Farm Bureau.

“Farm bureau has helped us build our network and provided opportunities to grow as leaders,” she said.

Continued growth and expansion at the farm are high on their priority list since they have a growing family to feed and children who one day might want to take over the operation.