The name of the MDA unit that Pat McMillan oversees as Assistant Secretary –  Marketing, Animal Industries and Consumer Services –  only begins to describe the diversity of the programs under his purview.  It also does no justice to the depth of knowledge that Pat has gained in his 23 years at the Maryland Department of Agriculture. As he says, he is “a student of statistics and a passionate advocate for agriculture and the people involved in the field that is the foundation of modern society.” He has translated these interests and his thirst for knowledge into a career that has served agriculture and the MDA well.

Pat hails from Virginia’s rural New River Valley in Southwest Virginia where his family had a hay and cattle operation.  He studied horticulture and agricultural economics at Virginia Tech University before working for three years on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and serving two years as a Peace Corps volunteer on the West Indian island of Montserrat where he helped small farmers with the establishment of tropical fruit orchards. He began working for MDA in 1986 as an Agricultural Marketing Specialist.  Prior to his appointment as Assistant Secretary, he was the agency’s director of Intergovernmental Relations.

Many of his early years at MDA were devoted to direct farm marketing projects including organizing community farmers markets and developing the WIC Farmers Market Nutrition Program in Maryland. His experiences at MDA building up direct marketing programs and in the legislative office shepherding such industry-changing initiatives as the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact, have given him a broad knowledge of the agricultural industry and the agency. From this knowledge he feels he has developed the ability to identify and pursue opportunities for the industry.

One of his many policy passions for which he has become the “go-to guy” is renewable fuel.  Renewable energy, he believes,  is a nexus for the nation’s need for alternative fuels, the farmer’s need for alternative markets, and the pressure for Maryland agriculture to find new uses for excess manure that will help improve Chesapeake Bay water quality. Pat says, “The success of agriculture in Maryland is based on a strong animal agriculture industry. Animal production is a ‘value added’ enterprise whereby we convert feed crops to animal products and benefit from the associated ancillary businesses.  The biggest opportunity moving into the future is technology that might provide better ways to manage animal manure.  For grain farmers, the ethanol industry has created an enormous new market and helped improve depressed commodity prices.”

Pat notes that he has been at MDA almost half his life.  “I’ve had a great career here. I’ve been very fortunate to have so much trust bestowed on me and so many opportunities to work with constituents.  I’ve never done anything without lots of help.”  From the beginning, Pat says, “I was given a lot of latitude, freedom and support to do substantive programs.  I want my staff to have that same latitude to take the initiative to help develop new opportunities for our ‘constituents.'”