(SALISBURY, MARYLAND) – Maryland farmers Amanda Heilman and Wes Miller will attend the 2017 Soybean Leadership College Jan. 10-12 in St. Louis, Mo.

Amanda and WesHeilman, of Worcester County, Md., is a seed sales representative for Pioneer Brand Products at Perdue Agribusiness. Miller, of Cecil County, is herdsman at Chesapeake Gold Farms, his family dairy farm which currently milks 250 cows and farms 1,500 acres.

The Maryland Soybean Board is sponsoring their trip. In Maryland, farmers grow about a half a million acres of soybeans, producing more than 20 million bushels of beans each year. With a value of $173 million to the state’s economy, soybeans are one of Maryland’s top crops.

Heilman graduated from University of Maryland College Park with a double major in Animal Science and Agricultural Science and Technology. Since college, she has worked on Delmarva as a crop consultant with focuses on nutrient management planning and conservation planning. A 2015 graduate of LEAD Maryland, Heilman serves on the board of the Worcester County Farm Bureau. She is a volunteer for CommonGround, a program that connects farm spokewomen with their non-farming peers to answer questions about farming and food production. Heilman blogs and posts under the handle “Delmarva Crop Queen.”

Miller manages the daily operations of the Chesapeake Gold Farms dairy and its employees. A 2012 graduate from the Pennsylvania State University with a bachelor’s degree in Animal Science, in 2016, Miller was awarded the first Outstanding Young Farmer of the Year award from Gov. Larry Hogan and the Maryland Department of Agriculture. Miller also is active in Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers and Ranchers program and serves on the Cecil County Farm Bureau board.

Soybean Leadership College, coordinated by the American Soybean Association, provides current and future agricultural industry leaders with training to effectively promote the soybean industry, communicate key agricultural messages and work to expand U.S. soybean market opportunities domestically and internationally.

The program also fosters networking between growers from across the country, encouraging collaboration, which in turn increases the effectiveness of soybean growers at the local, regional and national level.

The Maryland Soybean Board administers soybean checkoff funds for soybean research, marketing and education programs in the state. It is funded by farmers through an assessment of one-half of one percent of the net market value of soybeans at their first point of sale. One-half of the checkoff funds stay in Maryland for programs; the other half is sent to the United Soybean Board.

For more information on the Maryland Soybean Board, visit www.mdsoy.com.

# # #

For More Information:
Sandra Davis, Executive Director, Maryland Soybean Board
Office: 410.742.9500
sdavis26@verizon.net