ARLINGTON, VA – With one month left until the 2019 sign-up for the Dairy Margin Coverage program closes, the National Milk Producers Federation urged all dairy farmers to enroll in the program, which guarantees a payout for cash-strapped producers in 2019.

The DMC, a retooling of dairy programs included in the 2018 farm bill, is guaranteed to pay all producers enrolled at the maximum $9.50/cwt. coverage level for every month of production through June, with another payment predicted for July, according to USDA data and forecasts.  Enrollment numbers released yesterday indicate that 63% of dairy operations with an established DMC production history have enrolled so far for this year. This represents nearly 17,000 producers nationwide.

“Dairy farmers prefer to get their income from the market, but much-needed payments for the first half of this year provide welcome certainty for farmers,” said Jim Mulhern, NMPF President and CEO. “DMC offers better support for dairy farmers than its predecessor, the Margin Protection Program. It’s worthwhile for every farmer.”

The DMC, created in the 2018 Farm Bill, is a much more robust safety net for dairy producers of all sizes than the Margin Protection Program, which has been discontinued. DMC improvements include:

• Affordable higher coverage levels that permit all dairy producers to insure margins up to $9.50/cwt. on their Tier 1 (first five million pounds) production history, a higher level than previous programs.
• A new option for producers to receive a 25 percent discount on their premiums if they agree to lock in their coverage for the five-year period of this Farm Bill.  However, producers will be allowed to pay their premiums annually even if they elect the five-year discount.
• The feed-cost formula has been improved to include dairy quality hay values, which better reflects the true cost of feeding dairy cows.
• Affordable $5.00 coverage that lowers premium costs by roughly 88 percent. This creates more meaningful catastrophic-type coverage at a reasonable cost for larger producers without distorting the market signals needed to balance supply with demand.

NMPF has a resource page on its new website with more information about the program, including this 4-page brochure summarizing key facts about the DMC.

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The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), based in Arlington, VA, develops and carries out policies that advance dairy producers and the cooperatives they own. NMPF’s member cooperatives produce more than two-thirds of U.S. milk, making NMPF dairy’s voice on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more, visit www.nmpf.org.

ARLINGTON, VA – In an effort organized by the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, 70 dairy companies, farmer-owned cooperatives, and associations today sent a letter to the United States Trade Representative and the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture asking the U.S. government to capitalize on the conclusion of Japan’s national elections and quickly finalize a strong trade deal with Japan in order to secure critical market access for the dairy industry here at home.

“Given that Japan is an established market with a growing demand for dairy products, the successful negotiation of a robust trade agreement with Japan will bring a much-needed boost to the economic health of the U.S. dairy industry and set our industry up on a path to compete effectively there moving forward. Securing robust dairy export opportunities into this overseas market will be critical to restoring confidence for our dairy farmers and processors across the country,” they wrote.

The continued success of the U.S. dairy industry relies on stable export opportunities to markets abroad and Japan represents a major opportunity to expand growth. However, the Japan-EU agreement and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans- Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) have allowed the European Union, New Zealand and Australia to position themselves to seize sales from the U.S. dairy industry. Swift negotiation of a trade deal with Japan that builds upon the best components of the Japan-EU agreement and the CPTPP is urgently necessary for America’s dairy farmers and processors.

“Eroding dairy competitiveness in Japan is at a critical point. The time to re-level the tariff and access playing field is right now,” said Stan Ryan, President and CEO of Darigold. “Today Darigold supplies over 50% of the US American-style cheese exports to Japan. Those sales will soon be lost as competitor trade deals take effect.”

“Japan has been a very important market for Leprino Foods Company’s US-produced products for years,” said Sue Taylor, Vice President of Dairy Policy and Procurement for Leprino Foods Company. “We invested heavily in developing lactose and whey protein exports several decades ago and, more recently, mozzarella exports into this important market and believe that the market has significant further growth potential.  We risk losing these sales and growth opportunities to competitors who recently finalized preferential trade agreements unless the US negotiates a strong agreement.  We are very supportive of the administration’s efforts to secure an agreement that allows us to retain and grow this important market.”

“Japan is an important market for Glanbia Nutritionals, where we have the opportunity to grow our dairy exports,” said Wilf Costello, Chief Commercial Officer for Global Cheese with Glanbia Nutritionals. “We are at an important juncture where our competitors have secure preferential trading terms that are impacting US dairy ambitions. To ensure we can deliver on the opportunity in Japan, we need our trade negotiators to quickly finalize a trade agreement that secures access for American dairy products and ample room to grow.”

The U.S. exported $270 million in dairy products to Japan in 2018 with room for further growth. However, without a strong U.S.-Japan trade agreement, half of U.S. dairy sales to Japan will be wrested by competitors, mounting to a toll of $5.4 billion in lost export sales when Japan’s deals with the EU and CPTPP are fully phased in.

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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 U.S. dairy producers and the cooperatives they collectively own. The members of NMPF’s cooperatives produce the majority of the U.S, milk supply, making NMPF the voice of nearly 32,000 dairy producers on Capitol Hill and with government agencies. For more on NMPF’s activities, visit www.nmpf.org.

The U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) is a non-profit, independent membership organization that represents the global trade interests of U.S. dairy producers, proprietary processors and cooperatives, ingredient suppliers and export traders. Its mission is to enhance U.S. global competitiveness and assist the U.S. industry to increase its global dairy ingredient sales and exports of U.S. dairy products. USDEC accomplishes this through programs in market development that build global demand for U.S. dairy products, resolve market access barriers and advance industry trade policy goals. USDEC is supported by staff across the United States and overseas in Mexico, South America, Asia, Middle East and Europe. The U.S. Dairy Export Council prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, disability, national origin, race, color, religion, creed, gender, sexual orientation, political beliefs, marital status, military status, and arrest or conviction record.

Listen to the latest updates on trade mitigation payments and the Dairy Margin Coverage program with Chris Galen, senior vice president of membership services and strategic initiatives on Dairy Radio Now.

The NMPF Scholarship Committee selected three graduate students at its June meeting to receive scholarships as part of the 2019 NMPF National Dairy Leadership Scholarship Program. These students are conducting research in areas that will benefit dairy cooperatives and producers.

The 2019 Hintz Memorial Scholarship, given to the top scholarship candidate, was awarded to Amber Roberts, an MS candidate in Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities studying the factors that influence resilient dairy farms.

Additional scholarships were awarded to:

Cesar Matamoros, a PhD candidate in Integrative and Biomedical Physiology at the Pennsylvania State University studying the role of volatile fatty acids as metabolic regulators of mammary lipogenesis in the bovine.

Russell Pate, a PhD candidate in Ruminant Nutrition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign studying nutritional and environmental stressors and their effect on performance and immunological parameters in dairy cattle.

Congratulations!

The FARM Program welcomes Tyler Knapp as FARM Program Coordinator. Tyler, who holds degrees from the Oregon State University, the University of Arkansas, the University of Georgia and Ghent University, most recently worked in community and economic development with the University of Arkansas Extension Service.

Knapp will also assist FARM Program participants with managing and troubleshooting within the FARM Database, as well as handling administrative duties. “It is really exciting to get to work on projects for the dairy industry that will help farmers remain profitable while improving the welfare of cows, the environment and workers,” he said.

As part of the leadup to the implementation of FARM Animal Care Version 4.0, the National Dairy FARM Program hosted the first of four FARM Animal Care Version 4.0 Evaluator and Evaluator Trainer Courses in Madison, Wisconsin July 15^–17. FARM also held its fourth annual evaluator conference July 23-25.

FARM Animal Care Version 4.0, which will launch on Jan. 1 through the end of 2022, establishes a more refined process for animal care evaluator selection and training, including an increase of previous on-farm experience, more robust initial application and increased length of training. These updates, the focus of the training sessions, serve to increase the integrity and consistency of implementation of the FARM Animal Care Program. Evaluator requirements and application can be found here.

At the evaluator conference held in Denver, evaluators from across the country gathered to network and discuss updates to FARM. Evaluators had the opportunity to listen to speakers discuss relevant topics such as implementing FARM Environmental Stewardship at the participant level and the impact on animal welfare due to labor-related matters.

CWT assisted member cooperatives in securing 44 contracts to sell 5.3 million pounds of American-type cheeses, 3.8 million pounds of whole milk powder, 35,274 pounds of anhydrous milkfat (AMF), and 504,859 pounds of cream cheese to customers in Asia, Central and South America, the Middle East, North Africa, and Oceania. The product will be shipped to customers in 12 countries in those six regions of the world during the months of July through December 2019.

The contracts bring the 2018 total of the CWT-assisted product sales contracts to 35.8 million pounds of cheese, 4.2 million pounds of butter, 35.6 million pounds of whole milk powder, 189,598 pounds of AMF and 3.6 million pounds of cream cheese. These transactions will move the equivalent of 726.4 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis overseas.

Assisting CWT member cooperatives gain and maintain world market share through the Export Assistance program, in the long-term expands the demand for U.S. dairy products and the U.S. farm milk that produces them. This, in turn, positively impacts all U.S. dairy farmers by strengthening and maintaining the value of dairy products that directly impact their milk price.

The amounts of dairy products and related milk volumes reflect current contracts for delivery, not completed export volumes. CWT will pay export assistance to the bidders only when export and delivery of the product is verified by the submission of the required documentation.

All cooperatives and dairy farmers are encouraged to add their support to this important program. Membership forms are available at http://www.cwt.coop/membership.

The Codex Executive Committee met the first week of July in Geneva, Switzerland, with the question of whether to preserve the scientific basis of international food standards high on the agenda. The committee recommended that Codex should not embrace other non-scientific factors in its decision-making, a topic then hotly debated during the Codex Alimentarius Committee meeting. The U.S. emerged victorious against an EU-led charge to undermine Codex’s scientific mandate.

This win would not have been possible without the efforts of NMPF staff to build partnerships and strengthen U.S. relationships with overseas authorities and organizations.

For years, the United States struggled to rally support from other countries for the U.S. position on Codex. However, NMPF has worked hard to drive greater cooperation and build allies internationally. USDEC colleagues leveraged the Memorandum of Understanding established with our FEPALE partners to rally support for the U.S. position and to present a united front against the EU’s effort to seek revisions to Codex’s scientific mandate.

Continuing to build upon these international relationships will be key to defending Codex’s science-based standards. NMPF is pleased to report the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA). This MOU will complement the one NMPF already shares with FEPALE and provide NMPF with another way to engage directly with stakeholders in Central and South America.

NMPF has endorsed the bipartisan Agriculture Environmental Stewardship Act (H.R. 3744), reintroduced July 12 in the House by Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI) and Tom Reed (R-NY), both members of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

NMPF has worked in partnership with the bill sponsors and the American Biogas Council to craft this proposal, which makes nutrient recovery and biogas systems eligible for a Section 48 Investment Tax Credit to cover 30 percent of the upfront capital costs of installing the technologies.

“This measure recognizes the value that biogas systems can have for dairy producers of all sizes as they continuously improve their sustainability nationwide,” said Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF.  “The creation of this new investment tax credit would also address the value of nutrient recovery technologies, which can transform manure into fertilizer for crops and bedding for cows.  These technologies are important, but expensive.  If passed, this bill will help farmers incorporate these new technologies into their operations, for the benefit of everyone.”

The bill would enable dairy farmers to increase their investment in technologies that help recover and recycle nutrients from animal waste, in turn improving water quality in communities.

NMPF regulatory expert Miquela Hanselman testified on July 11 at a joint U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services meeting soliciting public comment on the upcoming update of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, making the case that dairy needs to remain its own food group, plant-based products shouldn’t be included in the dairy category, and that dairy protein is superior to plant protein.

“Dairy foods are one of the top sources of calcium, protein, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, vitamins A, B12, D and riboflavin in children’s diets,” Hanselman said. “In fact, it was determined in 2015 that 42% of individuals over the age of 1 don’t get enough calcium or vitamin D–two micronutrients that dairy products are full of. If dairy were removed from the diet, people would fall significantly below the estimated average requirement.”

The meetings began with each of the DGAC’s six subcommittees and one working group presenting draft protocols or proposed scientific approaches which then will be used to examine the scientific evidence. These protocols include analytic frameworks, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and search strategies, all of which are available online.

While the committee continues to put together the 2020 guidelines, a comment period will remain open for anyone who would like to submit comments. Submissions may be made here.

The second part of the meeting focused on comments from members of the public. The dairy industry was united in promoting the importance of dairy in healthy diets, even as some public comments were anti-dairy and not supported by scientific literature. NMPF and the National Dairy Council commented on key areas regarding dairy’s important place in the dietary guidelines.

Key priorities for dairy include:

• Maintaining dairy as a separate nutritional group
• Maintaining the recommendation of three dairy servings per day
• Preventing non-dairy beverages from being allowed into the dairy group
• Emphasizing the protein quality of dairy products

You can find the full statement here. NMPF will submit written comments and continue to monitor the dietary guidelines as more information is released. The next public meeting will be on October 24-25 in Washington, D.C.

focused on the importance of trade to agriculture and the need for Congress to quickly pass USMCA, focusing on the dairy industry.

In his remarks, Pence recognized CDI members Jim Wilson, Johnny Fagundes III, and John Fagundes IV and highlighted the benefits that USMCA will bring to our nation’s dairy farmers.

“I have to tell you, I watched this president drive a hard bargain,” on dairy during USMCA negotiations with Canada, Pence said. “The USMCA is a win for American dairy.”

Also as part of USMCA advocacy, Northwest Dairy Association Board Chairman and NMPF executive committee member Leroy Plagerman recently hosted a Farmers for Free Trade event at his family farm near Ferndale as part of the nationwide #MotorcadeForTrade.

NMPF is encouraging its members to take the opportunity to engage their representatives while they are in their home districts in August to emphasize the dairy-specific benefits of USMCA, such as locking in existing access to Mexico and disciplining Canada’s milk-pricing system.

NMPF has created an internal document on USMCA with background information, talking points, and an extensive list of actions taken to help move this agreement forward. Click here to download this reference document to help shape any comments. NMPF has also created a flyer on USMCA’s dairy benefits.

NMPF and its USDEC colleagues sent a letter July 12 to FDA and USDA encouraging the agencies to negotiate and make final a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing a smooth-functioning interagency process to support dairy exports, citing the indispensable role such exports play in supporting U.S. dairy farms.

“A successful MOU should outline key roles and responsibilities of each agency in order to foster the ability of the agencies to work in a collaborative manner on the various tasks involved in keeping American-made dairy products flowing freely abroad,” NMPF and USDEC wrote.

FDA has taken proactive steps in recent years to work in conjunction with USDA and better support the U.S. dairy industry in facilitating exports around the world. But more work remains.

Without careful coordination within the dairy industry, disagreement and communication breakdowns can derail export avenues. The MOU would tackle this challenge and proactively eliminate obstacles to expanding trade opportunities for the U.S. dairy industry.