HERD MENTALITY

Jason Johnson ’96 was among the first students to become part of the dairy management major, an option within the animal science program, when it was launched by UNH in 1992.

In 2018, amid a professional journey that has included working for a feed company, a bovine breeder and genetics company and the Billings Farm and Museum in Woodstock, Vermont, Johnson joined Stonyfield Organic as their farmer relationship manager. He now works with Stonyfield’s 36 directsupply farms across Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and eastern New York, which range in herd size from 20 to more than 350 cows.

“For 20-plus years I managed dairy farms as if they were my own,” says Johnson, who himself has a small family farm in Northwood (and is married to alumna Heather Norton Johnson ’97). “I got to see the challenges that every farm, every family grapples with, and now I’m in a position to help a lot of those farmers prepare for the future.”