Before a cup of yogurt reaches the grocery shelf, its story starts in the soil and in the barns on farms like the McCarty family’s, which have been built over four generations and are focused on sustaining the operation for the fifth.
For MVP Dairy in Celina, Ohio, this journey began more than a century ago with a family who understood that keeping the farm viable for the next generation would depend on building sustainability into every decision—for themselves, their cows and the consumers they serve.
“We’ve invested four generations and over 100 years’ worth of blood, sweat and tears into being here,” says Ken McCarty, one of the farm’s owners. “We hope to provide that opportunity for the fifth and future generations.”
From cropping decisions and manure handling to cow comfort, nutrition and technology investments, those priorities show up across the entire operation. At MVP, sustainability is about making steady improvements over time by finding small ways to do things better.
A Century in the Making
The McCarty family’s dairy roots trace back to northeastern Pennsylvania, where McCarty’s great-grandfather began milking a small herd on a hillside farm around 1914.
As the operation moved through generations, a turning point came when the family began to confront what it would take for the next generation to keep farming.
“In the early ’90s my parents recognized that the future for my three brothers and I to come back to the dairy in Pennsylvania wasn’t necessarily very bright,” McCarty says.
Rather than accept the limitation of staying put, they began looking for a way to keep the next generation involved, even if it meant starting over somewhere else. That search led them west to Kansas, where the family built McCarty Family Farms in Rexford in 2000, starting with a few hundred cows and quickly scaling as the next generation came back into the business.
“When we first got our start in Kansas, we were just a traditional co-op dairy and really had no tie to where our products went, or to any sort of best management practices, welfare, higher standards of quality, environmental sustainability or community development,” McCarty says.
That began to change when the family started talking with Danone North America.
“Our journey with Danone began in April of 2010. At that time, we milked about 3,500 cows on two separate sites,” he explains. “In order to really facilitate the relationship and to meet the milk demands that Danone had at that time, that required us to grow. We’re also located halfway to everywhere and halfway to nowhere in northwest Kansas, so we had to build a milk processing plant to really make it feasible to connect with the markets that Danone needed us to serve.”
Shipping condensed milk directly to Danone started in 2012 and gave the family a clearer line of sight from their cows to the yogurt and products Danone produced. The relationship gave the family a way to move beyond simply staying in business and build a structure that connected production, stewardship and markets in a more intentional way.
“We have good fortune of having a customer that is progressively minded that has very high levels of expectation, which translates down to how we operate our farms and kind of how we operate our business,” McCarty says.
Where Shared Values Became a Partnership
As the Kansas sites matured, the McCarty family began looking for a way to build that same connected model closer to Danone’s needs in the East. That search led them to western Ohio and to the Van Tilburg family.
“We really began searching around in western Ohio in about 2016,” McCarty recalls. “We knew we wanted to continue to grow, and we knew we didn’t have the capacity at our own plant without a major expansion, so we looked outside northwest Kansas.”
When the McCarty and Van Tilburg families partnered in 2018, the fit was clear from the beginning. MVP stands for the McCarty VanTilburg Partnership, bringing together two fourth generation farming families with complementary strengths. The McCartys brought more than a century of dairy experience, while the Van Tilburg family brought generations of crop farming expertise from Mercer County, Ohio.
Both families shared a vision for a dairy that would connect the field, the cow, the processor and the consumer in a more direct way. For the McCartys, that meant extending the family-driven approach they had built in Kansas. For the Van Tilburgs, it meant bringing their cropping expertise and land base into a partnership designed around a full soil-to-yogurt system.
“We wanted to create a system that connected everything from the soil to a cup of yogurt,” McCarty says. “We already had a relationship with Danone, and when we realized we were both pursuing the same opportunity, we decided to build the dairy together. That’s how MVP Dairy came to be.”
Today, that shared vision shapes how MVP Dairy operates. The farm milks about 3,900 cows, while the acres farmed by the Van Tilburg family help supply the feed those cows need and provide a place for nutrients from the dairy to return to the land.
“We have a really unique farm here,” McCarty says. “This farm, coupled with the acres that the Van Tilburgs farm, allows us to take the nutrients generated on this farm and apply them back to the fields that grow the crops that ultimately feed our cows, creating a complete cycle that sustains itself and reduces our environmental impact.”
Closing the Loop
At MVP Dairy, regenerative agriculture is less about individual practices than about building a system where every part of the farm supports the next.
“Sustainability, whether environmental, community or business, has always been a keystone principle for our overall business,” McCarty says. “The Van Tilburg family shares those same values, which is why it’s been a successful partnership. We really have a complete picture from soil to cup of yogurt at this farm.”
Because the farm controls everything from crop production to milk that ultimately becomes yogurt, decisions are made with the entire system in mind rather than optimizing one piece at the expense of another. Crop production, nutrient management, cow care and technology all work together to improve efficiency, resilience and long term sustainability.
That philosophy is reflected across the farm, from no till crop production and grid soil sampling to grass filter strips that protect waterways, precision irrigation and variable rate nutrient application technology. Together, the practices are designed to improve soil health, make more efficient use of resources and strengthen the long term resilience of the operation.
The farm’s manure management system is another example of that closed loop approach. Nutrients are recycled back to the fields that grow feed for the herd, while the system is designed to produce an estimated 60% fewer emissions than a traditional manure management system. It also creates a recycled water source used to irrigate cropland, keeping nutrients and water working within the farm rather than treating them as waste.
Through its partnership with Danone, the farm also regularly evaluates its environmental footprint using third party assessment tools that establish a baseline and measure progress over time. Rather than relying on broad sustainability claims, the assessments help identify opportunities to improve greenhouse gas emissions, soil health, water management, biodiversity and animal welfare.
Across the operation, management decisions are increasingly driven by data rather than assumptions. Technologies that monitor crop conditions, milk components, cow activity and body condition allow employees to make more precise decisions while continually measuring what works on their own farm.
Built for the Next 100 Years
The story of MVP Dairy is the story of two farm families choosing to build something that can last. For the McCartys, that journey began with a move from Pennsylvania to Kansas and a willingness to rethink how milk could be produced, processed and connected to a customer. For the Van Tilburgs, it brought generations of cropping knowledge and land stewardship into a partnership built around the same long-term goal.
Together, the families have created a model where sustainability is not treated as a separate project. It is part of how feed is grown, how manure is managed, how cows are cared for and how decisions are made each day. The goal is not only to reduce the farm’s footprint, but to keep improving the soil, strengthening the business and creating an opportunity for the next generation to continue farming.
