Recently announced, Kuehnert Dairy in Fort Wayne, Indiana, received a $100,000 grant from the Dairy Business Innovation Alliance (DBIA) for a new value-added facility on their farm.
The Dairy Business Innovation Alliance (DBIA), a partnership between the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association (WCMA) and the Center for Dairy Research (CDR), awarded 41 grants totaling nearly $4 million to farmstead operations and dairy processing businesses across the Midwest.
The funding awarded to the Kuehnert’s will be used to create a cheese curd manufacturing facility on their farm.
“We are incredibly grateful to the DBIA for selecting our project out of the hundreds they received this year,” said Andrew Kuehnert, owner of Kuehnert Dairy.
Kuehnert Dairy has been a family owned and operated farm for over 125 years in Allen county. They milk over 300 cows, have an agritourism operation and, in early 2024, will open an on-farm retail site. Kuehnert was also the 2019 Indy 500 Milkman.
This funding will be used to purchase cheese making equipment, product packaging and marketing and promotion services.
Why Cheese Curds? Kuehnert dreamed of doing farm fresh cheese curds as he realized a void in Indiana for milk products like this. They hope to sell the products at their on-site retail store, to local grocers in the Fort Wayne area and sell directly to consumers via online retail.
The grants will be awarded through the DBIA’s Dairy Business Builder and Dairy Industry Impact grant programs. The Dairy Business Builder grant program is targeted at small-to-medium size farmers or processors. Supported projects are aimed at diversifying on-farm activity, creating value-added products, enhancing dairy by-products or export programs. In the latest round, DBIA will be distributing 36 grants through the Dairy Business Builder grant program to farmstead and dairy processing business in nine of the 11 states covered by the DBIA.
