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Michigan Ag Community Wildfire Relief Fund challenge

The Michigan Director of Agriculture is raising funds for wildfire relief efforts.

Jamie Clover Adams, a former director of the Kansas Department of Agriculture, will match up to $3,000 in public contributions toward the relief efforts with personal monies. Members of the Michigan Commission of Agriculture are also pledging personal funds.  Donations can be made to the Michigan Ag Community Wildfire Relief Fund at any Chemical Bank location.

Creator of the fund, Matt Schaller, one of the original volunteers to coordinate convoys of supplies from Michigan to affected regions of the Great Plains, tells Brownfield the effort to support farmers in need has grown beyond anything he could have imagined.  “It started with local farms that were bringing out maybe surplus that they had on hand and that evolved into seed companies, fuel companies all getting involved.”

Schaller estimates more than $200,000 in supplies and fuel from Michigan has already been donated for the convoys and that number is growing.  “Hay’s not something you can just go to Tractor Supply and buy semis and semis of round bales.”

Schaller says he hopes the relief fund will become a grassroots relief effort to help others in agriculture affected by disasters.