In addition to meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last month to urge action against mislabeled imitation dairy products, NMPF has continued its efforts on Capitol Hill to bring pressure against the agency to enforce existing food labeling regulations.  The congressional effort gained additional momentum last month with the adoption of a provision calling on the FDA to take prompt action.

On July 12, the House Appropriations Committee approved the fiscal year 2018 Agriculture Appropriations bill, which featured a provision specifying that FDA must enforce federal standards on the use of dairy terms. The inclusion of this language is another success in NMPF’s fight to protect dairy’s good name, and ensure that imitators cannot use terms like “milk,” “cheese,” “yogurt” and “butter.” The appropriations process must conclude by the beginning of October – the start of fiscal year 2018 – and NMPF will continue to work to ensure that this provision is included in any “must-pass” legislative package.

At the same time, NMPF continues to build support for the DAIRY PRIDE Act (S.130/H. R.778), the bicameral, bipartisan legislation introduced by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) that would require FDA to enforce existing standards on the labeling of products that use dairy-related terms.

NMPF continues to encourage the farmers to contact their elected officials through its Dairy GREAT Action Center and urge support for the DAIRY PRIDE Act.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) long lack of enforcement of its own food labeling standards has led to a bewildering assortment of nutritionally inferior dairy imitators – a situation that requires immediate action by the federal government, NMPF told the agency at a high-level meeting last month.

On July 25, President and CEO Jim Mulhern led a team of NMPF food policy staff to FDA headquarters in College Park, Md., to discuss National Milk’s concern over the agency’s persistent inaction toward the misleading labeling practices of plant-based dairy imitators. FDA standards of identity stipulate that products labeled as “milk” must come from a lactating animal, yet regulators have consistently turned a blind eye to violations of these standards, thereby encouraging imitation dairy manufacturers to inappropriately use that and other dairy terms on their packaging when their products are nutritionally inferior.

“The meeting with FDA allowed us to convey our concern that in the absence of enforcement of existing clear and consistent regulations, well-defined product labels lose their meaning,” said Mulhern. “Cow’s milk has nourished generations, and built a reputation as a natural food with a consistent package of nine essential nutrients. It is misleading and deceptive to allow these nutritionally inferior imitators to use our hard-won reputation to their advantage.”

NMPF executives pointed out that the current federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans admonish consumers that “other products sold as ‘milks’ but made from plants are not included as part of the dairy group [of recommended foods] because their overall nutritional content is not similar to dairy milk.”

“This discrepancy is about more than words,” said Beth Briczinski, NMPF’s vice president for dairy foods and nutrition. “It’s a matter of the public being served nutritionally inconsistent, inferior products that desperately want to ride the coattails of and associate themselves with a superior food.”

NMPF also highlighted how U.S. enforcement of food labeling standards has failed to equal that of countries like Canada and the United Kingdom, where regulators actively police the improper labeling of imitation dairy products. These countries are proof that real milk and milk alternatives can exist without conflict, said Mulhern. “We will continue to press this issue until our government enforces its own dairy standards of identity.”

NMPF’s proposal to expand the H-2A farm worker visa program to include the year-round workers needed on dairy farms advanced in Congress on July 20 thanks to an amendment proposed by Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-WA). During a subsequent meeting with Newhouse, NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern expressed appreciation for the congressman’s work on the issue.

Rep. Newhouse’s amendment would allow farm employers to use the H-2A visa program to hire foreign workers, regardless of whether those employees are engaged in temporary or seasonal work. Dairy producers largely have not been able to utilize the current H-2A program because it restricts visas only the temporary and seasonal work. NMPF and its Immigration Task Force worked with Rep. Newhouse and Appropriations Committee leaders to develop the proposal so that dairy farmers can use the H-2A visa program to fulfill their year-round labor needs.

“This measure simply broadens an existing program for farm workers to recognize the unique needs of dairying,” Mulhern said. “It is critical to the vitality of the U.S. dairy industry and the fate of thousands of farm workers that our government creates and supervises a system that provides secure, legal employment.”

Expanding the scope of the H-2A farm worker visa program is part of the continuing effort of NMPF and its members to find solutions to the labor challenges facing America’s dairy industry. NMPF’s Immigration Task Force, which represents NMPF member co-ops and state dairy associations, has been working on this issue for many years. In addition to working with Rep. Newhouse and leaders of the House Appropriations and Judiciary committees, NMPF’s immigration efforts have involved extensive outreach to Trump Administration officials in a comprehensive effort to ensure all policy makers understand the unique labor needs of the dairy community.

Mulhern said he is optimistic that NMPF’s work with the House Judiciary Committee will soon result in an agricultural visa program bill, adding that the Newhouse amendment “is a great complement to National Milk’s supportive relationships with other members of Congress to address the need for a legal, reliable supply of farm workers.”

At the end of July, NMPF provided a detailed assessment of how trade helps grow U.S. dairy sales in response to a call for feedback from the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) as the administration reviews U.S. trade agreements. NMPF urged the Administration to preserve existing agreements, forge new ones and strongly enforce the terms of deals already in place.

U.S. trade agreements are especially positive for America’s dairy producers. “The most advantageous trade agreement partnership that the U.S. has is our open and dependable market access arrangement with Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement,” according to the comments, sent jointly with the U.S. Dairy Export Council. “Other U.S. FTAs have also successfully opened up export opportunities for our industry and to date generally worked to the benefit of our sector overall, including those with Central America, Colombia, Korea, Panama, Peru and Singapore, as well as others.”

“To continue that job-creating trend that has benefited dairy farmers and manufacturers alike, our industry strongly encourages the Administration to carefully select and move forward with new FTA partners with key agriculture-importing countries in Asia such as Japan, Vietnam and others in order to keep pace in that growing area of the world.”

The comments also stressed the critical importance of holding trading partners to their commitments to preserve export opportunities for U.S. farmers and manufacturers. Among various trade barrier and distortion concerns, the comments spotlighted Canada’s Class 6 and 7 pricing schemes and the EU’s policies on geographical indications (GIs) to curtail U.S. export opportunities. Further areas of concern included Russia’s and India’s barriers to U.S. dairy exports, among others.

In the final weeks before the United States enters the NAFTA renegotiation process, NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern met with U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer earlier this week to discuss dairy producers’ priorities and concerns on trade.

Mulhern was part of a roundtable discussion with CEOs of several other leading producer organizations that met with Lighthizer to share a common message of preserving existing trade markets – both in NAFTA and other U.S. free trade agreements (FTAs) – tearing down barriers, and forging new agreements.

In his remarks Tuesday to the administration’s top trade negotiator, Mulhern outlined the dairy industry’s priorities for NAFTA modernization, including the insistence that any future agreement preserve the success U.S. dairy has enjoyed through NAFTA, including its mutually beneficial partnership with Mexico. What should really be addressed, Mulhern said, is Canada’s prohibitive dairy import tariffs, its trade-distorting Class 6 and 7 pricing schemes, and the dispute over geographical indications (GIs).

“While much of U.S. agriculture enjoys duty-free access to Canada, when it comes to dairy Canada maintains insurmountable tariffs of 200-300%,” Mulhern said.  “These tariffs must be addressed in the NAFTA negotiations,” he said.

Mulhern added that the global milk powder markets “that our industry relies on will be severely damaged if Canada continues to dump its surplus milk powder on world markets at what are effectively heavily cross-subsidized prices.”  “This scenario will drive U.S. farmers’ prices and income to even more depressed levels in the U.S. and around the world.”

Regarding GIs, Mulhern said the United States needs “a stronger offensive strategy” when it comes to protecting names like feta and asiago from being co-opted by the European Union in their trade agreements with countries like China, Mexico and Japan. Allowing this behavior “deals a big blow to our opportunities to expand exports and lower our trade deficit,” Mulhern said.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has been a boon for the U.S. dairy sector, creating jobs and increasing product sales across the country, and any modernization effort should preserve this established success, according to testimonies presented by two top dairy executives last month.

National Milk’s key trade priorities for NAFTA were in the spotlight as both the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee and the House Agriculture Committee held hearings on the future of the agreement. NMPF member Darigold was represented by CEO Stan Ryan (pictured right) at the Trade Subcommittee hearing on July 18. Secretary Tom Vilsack, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), with which NMPF works jointly on trade issues, subsequently testified before the House Agriculture Committee on July 26. Both Ryan’s and Vilsack’s comments aligned with NMPF’s key trade policy priorities.

They stressed the importance of preserving existing market access avenues under NAFTA and opening up opportunities for new exports through the upcoming NAFTA modernization process, as well as new free trade agreements (FTAs) that are urgently needed in Asia to preserve U.S. competitiveness in that key region.

Darigold’s Ryan told the House subcommittee that his cooperative and other U.S. dairy companies have benefitted from NAFTA through stronger demand for their milk. An agreement that supports more than 25,000 in the dairy sector alone must be preserved, he said.

“NAFTA has been a driving force behind remarkable growth in dairy exports and is the reason the United States’ share today of Mexico’s dairy imports is 73 percent,” Ryan said, adding that U.S. dairy sales to Mexico have risen to $1.2 billion in 2016 from just $124 million in 1995.

Ryan’s testimony also focused on the lack of U.S. dairy access to Canada included in NAFTA, as well as subsequent challenges that have resulted from Canadian policies designed to distort trade. Canada’s new pricing schemes have restricted U.S. dairy protein exports to Canada while also facilitating the disposal of Canada’s excess milk proteins in world markets.

The new Canadian policies “effectively subsidize exports and are already being used to undercut U.S. dairy exports of milk proteins not just to Canada but even more importantly to a number of other export markets around the world,” Ryan said.

USDEC’s Vilsack echoed the need to challenge Canada during his testimony before the Agriculture Committee on July 25. He also stressed the importance of ensuring that the European Union (EU) cannot succeed in its quest to monopolize the use of common food names in Mexico and elsewhere around the world.

“If we allow the Europeans to monopolize certain terms for cheeses, that will make it difficult to market much of what we produce in this country,” he stated.

Congress must revise the dairy safety net program first established in the 2014 Farm Bill to provide farmers with more reliable, effective risk management protection, said Ken Nobis, NMPF first vice chairman, at a Senate hearing last month on the future of the Farm Bill.

Nobis laid out the dairy industry’s concerns with the Margin Protection Program (MPP) at a Washington hearing held by the Senate Agriculture Committee, overseen by Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Nobis told members of the committee that he believes the MPP is the right tool, but improvements must be made in the next Farm Bill to ensure it works effectively when farmers need it most. A more effective program will lead to increased participation in the MPP, and better overall risk management for the dairy sector.

In addition to his role on the NMPF Board of Directors, Nobis leads the Michigan Milk Producers Association, a milk marketing cooperative serving over 1,700 dairy farmers in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. He testified on behalf of his cooperative and NMPF. His full testimony can be found here.

In making the case for improving the MPP, Nobis highlighted proposed changes NMPF and its members have developed to improve it. The MPP is designed to help farmers insure against either low milk prices or high feed costs, Nobis said, but the determination of the feed price used in the margin calculation currently understates the true cost of purchasing dairy cattle feed. During the Farm Bill negotiation process in 2014, NMPF’s original proposal for the feed formula was cut by 10 percent to address budget concerns. Given that the government has profited from the program in years since, the fiscal concerns that led to the 10-percent cut were misplaced, explained Nobis.

“I guarantee, if Congress alters the MPP so that it more accurately reflects the actual costs of production for businesses like mine, participation in the program will increase,” Nobis testified. “Making the program more attractive for dairy farmers is vital to ensuring participation in the program, and the safety of America’s dairy industry.”

Nobis said it is also important to expand dairy farmers’ access to additional risk management tools like the Livestock Gross Margin for Dairy Cattle (LGM) program and similar programs that could be offered by USDA.

Nobis also expressed appreciation to Roberts and Stabenow, as leaders of the Agriculture Committee, for working with Senate Appropriations Committee leaders, including Sens. Thad Cochran and Pat Leahy, to include important changes to the MPP in the agriculture appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018.

The proposed improvements to the MPP would reduce premiums paid by dairy farmers for the first 5 million pounds of milk covered by the program, and change the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s calculation of the actual margin from a two-month average margin to monthly. NMPF believes these developments – which reflect recommendations adopted by the NMPF Board earlier this year –  will strengthen the program and help pave the way for additional necessary improvements in the upcoming farm bill.

Nobis’s testimony also touched on several other policy challenges also affecting U.S. dairy farmers, including immigration and labor shortages, the vitality of U.S. dairy trade, child nutrition and environmental sustainability.

Heeding Mark Twain’s advice that foreign travel is fatal to narrow-minded thinking, six of NMPF’s board officers joined me on a week-long trip to Europe last month. Our goal was to better understand how the U.S. dairy sector can best broaden its focus on global markets, as many major European dairy companies have successfully done. What we found in conversations with key players in Denmark, France and Germany is that America’s dairy industry has a significant opportunity to grow our share of the world market, and the time for action is now.

Of course, the imperative of addressing this challenge is staring us in the face. U.S. milk production continues to outpace growth in domestic consumption, and if we don’t develop new markets overseas, we will suffer the consequences of lower farm milk prices and the resultant pressure to survive.

Meanwhile, while the U.S. dairy industry has kept its predominant focus on the large domestic dairy market, the collaborative force of the 28-nation European Union (EU) has worked to become the dominant player in global dairy trade. The EU has a diverse array of dairy farming styles, and collectively its farmers also produce more milk than can be marketed internally, creating the need for a strong export capability.  NMPF’s leaders sought to deepen our understanding of how that reality is addressed by EU dairy cooperatives and processors, and how it affects the key challenges and opportunities they are seeing in the export market.

Perhaps the most interesting reaction – one we heard repeated across meetings in several nations – is that Europe does not view the United States as a competitive threat (even though we’re the world’s third-largest exporter behind the EU and New Zealand).  The view is that the U.S. dairy industry’s focus on our domestic market will keep us from competing more aggressively in foreign markets. While that view is not without some justification, I believe it underestimates the growing understanding here that increasing U.S. presence in global dairy markets is our new manifest destiny.

Our task will be challenging, but we can and will meet it. The EU dairy industry is organized, experienced, committed and well-positioned to grow their exports. It was clear our European cooperative counterparts are more heavily invested in the export market than our U.S. industry. Most exported at least 10 percent of their total sales with a variety of products, and all of them are seeking to grow that volume through increased investment of assets in new products and international marketing activities like sales forces, offices and subsidiaries.

All three dairy cooperatives we met – Arla in Denmark, DMK in Germany and Sodiaal in France (as well as proprietary processor Lactalis) – indicated they are focused on expanding their export sales. Sodiaal is creating products for consumers in China, Southeast Asia and West Africa. Interestingly, both Arla and Sodiaal indicated they want to not only export additional products to emerging markets, but also build processing and distribution facilities in new markets and work with local farmers. Meanwhile, DMK is focusing its market expansion on the Middle East and East Africa.

The European drive to export has been made even more pressing by the twin challenges of the end of production quotas two years ago and the simultaneous loss of the Russian market due to economic sanctions that are still in place.  Previously, Germany had a large market share in Russia, but now is focused on increasing its sales to China – in direct competition with New Zealand. The income of the EU’s producers is supplemented by payments generated by its Common Agricultural Policy, and that has softened the blow of the recent two-year downturn in global prices.  The overall income on the vast majority of EU dairy farms is increased by roughly 30 percent through various government payments.

We also heard from these cooperatives, as well as the national dairy associations we met, that marketplace pressures familiar to farmers in the United States have long been creating apprehensions about how milk is produced in Europe. The consolidation of retailers in Europe, each battling for market share, has generated a new emphasis on issues including animal care, traceability, sustainability and opposition to genetically modified ingredients.

In particular, the pressure to market “GMO-free” dairy products in Europe has been largely driven by retailers who believe they are responding to consumer desires. However, the information we gathered during the trip suggested that consumers care very little about GMO absence claims imposed by retailers on processors, and therefore on producers. In fact, individuals we met with indicated that, like here, the issue is largely driven by activists groups. As in the United States, the GMO-free approach in the EU appears to be a marketer-driven strategy to gain space and market share over competitors.

We came away from this trip recognizing that these EU dairy companies are committed and well-positioned to grow their exports.  It’s ample evidence of why the United States needs to respond in kind, now. Our leadership had many discussions about how to collaborate toward the common goal of increasing our investment — and presence — in the world market.

NMPF’s Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) program will play a critical role in these on-going discussions. We are currently engaged in a strategic planning effort to examine CWT’s future role, an effort that I expect will lead to a sharpened focus on how best to grow our dairy export markets. In addition to NMPF’s efforts, U.S. Dairy Export Council President and CEO Tom Vilsack is planning to expand the percentage of our milk production that is sold overseas.

Now is the time for action. Working together, we can become a more competitive force in the world market.  Our European friends don’t think we have it in us. Sounds like a great challenge to me.

ARLINGTON, VA – “The Soy Foods Association’s 20-year-old petition to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is as inappropriate today as it was when it was filed in 1997, and the Good Foods Institute (GFI) is mistaken for trying to revive those old arguments today. Nothing has happened in the intervening time period to allow the combination of soy powder, water, emulsifiers, stabilizers, sugar, sodium and added vitamins to magically become milk. Regardless of what food technologists might try, milk still only comes from mammals.

“The efforts of GFI and other groups to alter food standards that have been in place for decades – allowing manufacturers of imitation dairy foods to append a plant name like almond, soy, hemp or quinoa in front of legally defined dairy terms such as milk, cheese, yogurt and ice cream – falsely suggests that the products are nutritionally equivalent. They are not. This is a transparent attempt to profit from milk’s good name by emulating the wording, but not the superior nutrition, of our products. It is misleading and deceptive to allow these nutritionally inferior imitators to use our hard-won reputation to their advantage.

“What’s more, this request is not only inconsistent with U.S. food standards, it’s also inconsistent with regulations used by most other nations, which don’t allow plant-based imitators to co-opt dairy-specific terms. Ironically, in GFI’s first request to FDA in March, the organization admitted that in China – supposedly the original source of ‘soy milk’ – the more common term used in Mandarin for soy beverages is ‘dòu jiāng,’ which translates to bean slurry. At least that is a more accurate and legally compliant product description.”

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The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance the well-being of dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. The members of NMPF’s cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply, making NMPF the voice of dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more on NMPF’s activities, visit our website at www.nmpf.org.

ARLINGTON, VA – The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) long absence of enforcement of its own food standards has allowed the marketing of hundreds of deceptively labeled dairy imitators – a situation requiring immediate action by the federal government, National Milk Producers Federation officials told the agency during a high-level meeting in Maryland today.

Food policy staff from the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), led by President and CEO Jim Mulhern, met with key FDA regulators to discuss the dairy organization’s concern over the agency’s persistent inaction toward the misleading labeling practices of plant-based food manufacturers. During the last two decades, plant-based “milk” imitators have flooded the market, using dairy terminology and imagery to advertise their products as suitable replacements for cow’s milk, despite the fact that they are nutritionally inferior. While FDA’s own standards of identity clearly stipulate that products labeled as “milk” must come from a lactating animal, the agency has consistently turned a blind eye to violations of these standards, thereby encouraging these imitation dairy manufacturers to inappropriately use that term, as well as other dairy product terms like “cheese,” “yogurt,” and “ice cream.”

“Today’s meeting with FDA allowed us to convey our concern that in the absence of enforcement of existing clear and consistent regulations, well-defined product labels lose their meaning,” said Mulhern. “In the case of imitation milks, these beverages are nothing but a factory-made slurry of ground-up nuts or seeds combined with water, sugar, emulsifiers and thickeners. By comparison, cow’s milk has attracted and nourished generations, and built a reputation as a natural food with a consistent package of nine essential nutrients. It is misleading and deceptive to allow these nutritionally inferior imitators to use our hard-won reputation to their advantage.”

NMPF surveyed imitation dairy beverages in the marketplace and concluded that none of the imitation products matched the nine essential nutrients found in cow’s milk. The strongest discrepancies were noticed in amounts of protein, sodium and potassium. While almond “milk” has become the most popular dairy alternative, it fails to deliver one of real milk’s core nutrients: protein; almond beverages contain just 1 gram per serving, compared to real milk’s 8 grams (other popular milk imitators, including rice- and coconut-based beverages, also offer little to no protein). The survey also highlighted the amount of sodium added to dairy imitators for flavor. About two-thirds of the products surveyed contained more sodium than cow’s milk (which is all naturally occurring), some close to double the amount. A similarly large majority failed to offer the same amount of potassium – one of three nutrients most lacking in Americans’ diets, according to government dietary research.

NMPF executives pointed out that the current federal Dietary Guidelines for Americans admonish consumers that “other products sold as ‘milks’ but made from plants are not included as part of the dairy group [of recommended foods] because their overall nutritional content is not similar to dairy milk.”

“Beyond the wide variation in the presence of many nutrients, not one of these imitators had the same amount of nine essential nutrients in real milk,” said Beth Briczinski, NMPF’s vice president for dairy food and nutrition. “Some may add food-grade calcium salts or a few vitamins, but none matches milk’s complete nutritional profile. This discrepancy is about more than words; it’s a matter of the public being served nutritionally inconsistent, inferior products that desperately want to ride the coattails of and associate themselves with a superior food.”

The meeting also allowed NMPF to highlight the fact that FDA is out of step with its international counterparts, including Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union. Each country actively polices improper labeling of imitation dairy products; Canada requires U.S.-based companies to change the wording on their labels to comply with the country’s own rules, for example, requiring that the product marketed as “almondmilk” in the United States be labeled as “almond beverage.” Meanwhile, the EU Court of Justice determined last month that products not sourced from an animal cannot bear the terms “milk,” “cheese” and so on.

“These countries prove that by actively enforcing standards of identity, dairy-free alternatives and real milk can co-exist without conflict,” said Mulhern. “We are not trying to eliminate the marketing of these foods. We want to end the consumer deception associated with these products and for FDA to enforce its regulations on product integrity. We will continue to push on this issue until FDA acts to ensure dairy standards are enforced.”

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The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance the well-being of dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. The members of NMPF’s cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply, making NMPF the voice of dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more on NMPF’s activities, visit our website at www.nmpf.org.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress must revise the dairy safety net program established in the 2014 Farm Bill to provide farmers with effective risk management protection that will increase participation in the program, according to Ken Nobis, president of the Michigan Milk Producers Association (MMPA) and first vice-chair of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), who spoke at a 2018 Farm Bill hearing today.

Nobis (right) testified before the Senate Agriculture Committee that while he believes the dairy Margin Protection Program (MPP) remains the right program for the dairy industry, “the changes Congress made to the MPP when writing the last Farm Bill rendered it ineffective when dairy farmers needed it the most.”

Nobis is a dairy farmer from St. Johns, Mich., and leader of MMPA, a milk marketing cooperative serving over 1,700 dairy farmers in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. He testified on behalf of his cooperative and the National Milk Producers Federation. His full testimony can be found here.

In calendar year 2015, dairy farmers paid more than $70 million into the MPP and received payments totaling just $730,000. In 2016, those figures were $20 million and $13 million. Nobis said farmers found that the program was not helpful during two years that were particularly detrimental to the dairy industry. As a result, many of them have become disenchanted with the program, and participation has dwindled.

“I guarantee, if Congress alters the MPP so that it more accurately reflects the actual costs of production for businesses like mine, participation in the program will increase,” he told Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) and Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) (both left).

In making his case for improving the MPP, Nobis detailed a list of proposed changes NMPF and its members had developed to improve it. The MPP is designed to help farmers insure against either low milk prices or high feed costs, Nobis said, but the determination of the feed price used in the margin calculation is problematic. During the farm bill process, NMPF’s original proposed feed formula, though considered accurate, was cut by 10 percent to address other budget concerns. Based on the government profit made on the program, concerns about budget that led to the 10-percent cut were misplaced, explained Nobis.

Nobis said it is also important to expand dairy farmers’ access to additional risk management tools like the Livestock Gross Margin for Dairy Cattle (LGM) program and similar programs that could be offered by USDA.

“Making the [MPP] program more attractive for dairy farmers is vital to ensuring participation in the program, and the safety of America’s dairy industry,” Nobis said.

Nobis also expressed appreciation that the Agriculture Committee’s leadership worked with the Senate Appropriations Committee to include important changes to the MPP in the agriculture appropriations bill for fiscal year 2018.

Nobis’s testimony touched on several other policy challenges affecting U.S. dairy farmers, including immigration and labor shortages, and the vitality of U.S. dairy trade as NAFTA renegotiations begin. He commended Congress and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue for actions taken earlier this year to reintroduce 1% flavored milk back into schools. He also thanked Roberts, Stabenow and several other Congress members for backing legislation that would support farmers’ roles as stewards of environmental sustainability.

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About NMPF
The National Milk Producers Federation, based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance the wellbeing of dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. The members of NMPF’s cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S. milk supply, making NMPF the voice of dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. Visit www.nmpf.org for more information.

About the Michigan Milk Producers Association
The Michigan Milk Producers Association (MMPA) is a dairy farmer owned cooperative founded in 1916. MMPA serves approximately 2,000 dairy farmers in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin, handling approximately 5 billion pounds of milk annually. MMPA operates two SQF Level 3 certified dairy ingredient plants in Michigan and a cheese plant in Indiana.