Mission, Vision & Staff

Jill is working with a group of passionate agricultural advocates from across Michigan to grow the MIFarmLink program, an effort started in Ottawa County that helps preserve farmland by connecting agricultural landowners looking to sell/lease land with beginning farmers looking for land to farm.
She graduated from Michigan Technological University with a Master's in Forest Ecology and Management. Jill owns Rustic Roots Farm where she tends honeybees, poultry, goats, a fruit orchard and garden, greenhouse production, and woodworking. Jill has served on the Washtenaw County Conservation District board for 10 years prior and now is a Farm Bureau member in District 3. She has experience in forestry at the Greening of Detroit and ReLeaf Michigan, as well as working with a diversity of farmers through the Washtenaw Farmer Cooperative.

Becky Huttenga, a lifelong resident of Ottawa County, grew up as a 4-H kid on a 24-acre hobby farm in Spring Lake Township before heading off to Michigan State University, where she earned her Bachelor of Science and 30 credits hours of Masters level graduate study in Animal Science at MSU. While raising her two children, now 24 and 29, Becky developed quite a diverse resume, from nutritional sales at Purina Mills to restaurant management at her family’s Grand Haven business to Program Assistant for Michigan State University Extension’s 4-H program. But her passion for being the bridge between natural resources and agriculture sparked when she became Executive Director at the Ottawa Conservation District in 2011. She then joined Ottawa County in 2015 where she now leads countywide initiatives in farmland protection, agriculture, and economic development. Becky, a Farm Bureau member, serves on the Ottawa Conservation District Board of Directors, Michigan Association of Conservation Districts State Council, West Michigan Agribusiness Talent Council, National Agricultural Land Network Advisory, Careerline Tech Ag Program Advisory, and on numerous planning committees for agricultural outreach events. Her favorite career accomplishments include hosting two radio shows, founding Michigan’s first statewide land linking platform, MIFarmLink.org, and being named one of Mlive’s Women Who Shape the State in 2023. Becky currently resides in the City of Grand Haven. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-huttenga-7844411b/

Becky is serving as one of two Land Transfer Navigator’s in Michigan, a partnership between American Farmland Trust and USDA-NRCS to help increase the number of farmed acres under a succession and transfer plan.

Trilby MacDonald is a nonprofit fundraiser, content writer, and journalist with the Ann Arbor Observer. She launched the Observer’s weekly news publication a2view, and has published and edited a diverse range of articles in a dozen print and digital publications. Trilby has raised millions of dollars through grants, annual appeals, and major gifts for the arts, and environmental, agricultural, and social services organizations.

Raised in New York City by a psychotherapist and a documentary filmmaker, Trilby was exposed to a progressive world view, traveled widely, and produced and directed documentaries before moving to Brazil to pursue social science research and sustainable development initiatives with international nonprofits. She has a Bachelor's in Anthropology from Bard College and a Master's in Geography from Michigan State University, and following the completion of her graduate work in 2009, settled in Ann Arbor to raise a family on a four-season CSA farm she owned and operated with her husband until 2018. Trilby co-founded the Michigan Flower Growers’ Cooperative, a wholesale flower market in Ypsilanti, to support the sale of locally grown flowers.

Frustrated by the difficulties she and others in the farming community have had buying land, she became the catalyst and primary fundraiser behind the MIFarmLink project in Washtenaw County. Trilby Chairs the Agricultural Lands Preservation Advisory Committee (ALPAC) where she has served since 2016.