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NMPF Provides Comments to Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

NMPF’s Regulatory Affairs Director, along with an Olympic athlete (and dairy farmer), told the government’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee how dairy is a critical part of American diets that should be considered for its full range of benefits in comments made before the panel Sept. 12.

Miquela Hanselman from NMPF, and Elle St. Pierre, a farmer-member of the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative and a world medalist track athlete who represented the United States in the women’s 1,500-meter race in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, both offered their perspectives on dairy’s role in the diet before the panel that will shape the scientific report informing the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Hanselman’s comments focused heavily on how dairy at all fat levels haven neutral or positive health benefits and how current guidelines work against including the varieties of milk that Americans consume the most.

“With the scientific question focused on sources of saturated fats, this committee has the opportunity to remedy a previous oversight and include the newer science on dairy fats and the dairy matrix,” she said. “Dairy foods, regardless of fat level, appear to have either neutral or beneficial effects on chronic disease risks including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and stroke. This committee shouldn’t default to the overly broad recommendation to avoid saturated fats regardless of food source.”

St. Pierre, a U.S. track and field champion and recent new mom, spoke out against the proliferation of plant-based imitation beverages that offer wildly inconsistent nutritional value, cautioning against any consideration of them as potential dairy replacements.

Plant-based beverages “are so nutritionally different from real milk that whether one views them positively or negatively, their impact on health cannot be assumed to be the same as, or even similar to, that of milk,” said St. Pierre, who lives near Berkshire, VT. “I strongly caution against and oppose any inference that health impacts associated with milk consumption would apply to plant-based milk alternatives.”

Public oral comments are part of the committee’s information-gathering process for the next set of guidelines. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee is convened every five years by the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services to make recommendations for American diets, affecting many federal nutrition programs.

DMC Margin Gains Almost $3 in August

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

The August Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) margin was up by $2.94/cwt from July to reach $6.46/cwt in August, 2023’s highest margin since January and the margin’s first monthly increase this year.

As is often the case whenever there is a large monthly margin movement, the milk price was the main driver of the change. The U.S. average all-milk price added $2.30/cwt to July’s level to reach $19.70/cwt in August, the year’s first monthly milk price increase. August feed costs fell $0.64/cwt, mostly due to a drop in the price of corn, although soybean meal and premium alfalfa prices were down slightly as well.

The August margin jump in the margin was the first of several that futures markets expect will raise the margin above the maximum $9.50/cwt DMC Tier 1 coverage level. So far this year, the program has made substantial payments to that coverage level every month.

Long-Awaited Disaster Assistance Comes After NMPF Efforts

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

NMPF on Sept. 11 applauded USDA’s announcement it will provide critical, long-awaited financial assistance for dairy farmers affected by natural disasters, which came after years of lobbying the agency for a plan to administer the aid approved by Congress.

The Milk Loss Assistance program administered by the Farm Service Agency will compensate eligible dairy farms and processors for milk dumped due to qualifying disaster events in 2020, 2021 and 2022, including droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, floods, derechos, excessive heat, winter storms and smoke exposure.

“On top of the challenges created by wild price gyrations and the COVID-19 pandemic, dairy farmers since 2020 have also faced an inadequate federal mechanism for addressing unforeseen weather catastrophes, further straining finances at a time when strains have been hard to bear,” said Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF.

“NMPF never accepted that situation, and we’re very appreciative of USDA’s diligent work over several months to finalize the compensation plan that will address this backlog of disaster assistance. We thank Congress for providing this necessary funding, and we encourage both Congress and USDA to find ways to address future natural disasters more quickly. We also urge farmers affected by these disasters to sign up, and we stand ready to assist them as they go through this process.”

Since Congress approved funding in 2021, NMPF has held numerous meetings with FSA (Farm Service Agency) staff highlighting dairy farmers’ disaster needs. Most recently, NMPF helped provide USDA with cost estimates for the program to help speed up its implementation and met with Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation Robert Bonnie to urge action on the issue. NMPF also sent a public letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack urging that funds be released quickly and engaged with members of Congress to ensure accountability, among other initiatives.

These efforts came on top of NMPF advocacy for the funds to be included in legislation, a wide-ranging effort that involved grassroots activism and many meetings with dairy champions in Congress. The Milk Loss Program will help farmers and, in certain cases, cooperatives, recover losses previously overlooked by disaster assistance.

Dairy farmers and cooperatives can sign up for the Milk Loss Program through Oct. 16. Affected producers are encouraged to sign up as soon as possible. For eligibility and application information, as well as details about how payments will be calculated, visit USDA’s Milk Loss Assistance program announcement.

Farm Bill Expires, Government Funding Doesn’t, and FMMO Hearing Soldiers On

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

Uncertainty defined dairy in September, as the threat of a government shutdown and the impending expiration of the 2018 farm bill, occurring in the context of a slow-moving USDA hearing on the Federal Milk Marketing Order system, reminded dairy farmers of how much of the policy landscape operates outside their control, even as genuine progress continued in the areas that they could.

Five weeks into USDA’s FMMO hearing in Carmel, IN, a federal shutdown approached on Oct. 1, with government spending authority scheduled to lapse and NMPF experts and analysts readying for an indefinite hiatus in the hearing. Instead, an unexpected extension of funding for 45 days presents allow the hearing to continue USDA’s thorough examination of milk pricing, in which NMPF’s proposals have formed the foundation of discussion and remain the most compelling, comprehensive plan for milk pricing modernization.

“We had unanimous support from our board on our proposals” forged after two years of discussion, NMPF Senior Director of Economic Research & Analysis Stephen Cain said in a Dairy Defined podcast Sept. 18. “We have a well-rounded package that’s supported by the entire industry. So that’s the big piece here, again, is just making sure that we get everything we need to into the record to make sure the USDA has the right information they need to make the best decisions to make sure their orders are operating as effectively as they can.”

As October began, USDA had already heard testimony surrounding most major NMPF-identified topic areas, including the make allowance, milk composition and the Class I mover, and was moving into the Class I price surface, the last major topic of dispute among industry players. Through the hearing, NMPF’s years of preparation has paid off, with well-reasoned, factually grounded positions that work in tandem to help farmers in the entire industry. Opposing NMPF has been a motley crew of processor and niche-farmer interests touting proposals that largely benefit themselves.

For more information on the FMMO modernization effort, visit NMPF’s page on the FMMO hearing here.

As FMMO discussions progressed in Indiana, farm bill action in Washington remains elusive as legislation reauthorizing USDA programs expired Sept. 30. Farm bill expirations have ample historical precedent, with authorization often expiring before a new bill is approved. Agriculture committee lawmakers and NMPF continued to express optimism that a law can be passed before year’s end; if not, historical experience suggests that Congress may seek an extension of current law in late 2023 or early 2024, keeping farm-bill programs such as the Dairy Margin Coverage program in operation. NMPF staff continue to be heavily involved in discussions about both the shape and timing of the farm bill.

National Dairy FARM Program Launches Enhanced Biosecurity Initiative

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

The National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Program today announced the launch of FARM Biosecurity – Enhanced, a new aspect of the FARM Biosecurity Program that includes training and an online database.

FARM Biosecurity – Enhanced, includes an online database to develop and securely store dairy producers’ enhanced biosecurity plans (EBP) and an online training that helps users write those plans. FARM has also developed a FARM Biosecurity – Enhanced Biosecurity Prep Guide and Database User Guide to complement these tools.

Stronger, or enhanced, levels of biosecurity will be needed to protect cattle against the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) found in two-thirds of the world. One FMD case in the United States could shut down movement across the nation of livestock and their products for at least 72 hours.

FARM Biosecurity – Enhanced incorporates the on-farm elements of the Secure Milk Supply Plan for Continuity of Business. The Secure Milk Supply (SMS) Plan for Continuity of Business was designed to help the dairy industry prepare for an FMD outbreak by providing producers with the tools to develop an enhanced biosecurity plan. The FARM Biosecurity – Enhanced database not only securely stores the EBP plans, but with producer permission will share the plans with state animal health officials for their approval to speed up issuing a movement permit in the event of an FMD outbreak.

FARM Biosecurity has two parts: Everyday Biosecurity for common disease threats and Enhanced Biosecurity for highly contagious foreign animal diseases. The FARM Biosecurity resources aim to protect dairy cattle, build resiliency, and future business continuity opportunities for the dairy industry.

NMPF and the National Dairy FARM Program would like to thank the United States Department of Agriculture National Animal Disease Preparedness and Response Program (USDA NADPRP) for funding the FARM Biosecurity initiative through a cooperative agreement and Dr. Danelle Bickett-Weddle with Preventalytics who was instrumental in the development of the FARM Biosecurity resources.

To learn more about the FARM Program or access protocol templates and training aids, visit the FARM website: nationaldairyfarm.com

To learn more about the Secure Milk Supply Plan, access templates, standard operating procedures, movement logs, and more, visit securemilk.org

NMPF’s Doud, Land O’Lakes’ Kappelman on Dairy Expo Farm Bill Panel

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

NMPF’s incoming President and CEO and a top Land O’Lakes Inc. executive are participating in an informative discussion on “What the 2023 Farm Bill Has in Store for Dairy” on Thursday at noon CDT at the World Dairy Expo. Attendees will gain valuable insights into the policy changes that will shape the future of U.S. dairy.

The event is open to the public in the Mendota 1 meeting room of the Exhibition Hall on the World Dairy Expo grounds. The discussion will also be livestreamed and available on demand via the World Dairy Expo YouTube channel.

Panelists include:

Gregg Doud – Chief Operating Officer, NMPF

Gregg Doud is NMPF’s Chief Operating Officer. He will become President and CEO of the organization in January after having been named to the position last June. Before arriving at NMPF he served as the Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the United States Trade Representative from 2018 until 2021; he previously served as the president of the Commodity Markets Council, representing commodities exchanges before Congress and federal agencies. He also has served as a staff member for the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, where he helped draft the 2012 Farm Bill, and as chief economist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. Most recently, he worked at Aimpoint Research as its Vice President of Global Situational Awareness and Chief Economist.

Pete Kappelman – Senior Vice President of Member and Government Relations, Land O’Lakes

Pete Kappelman brings a lifetime of experience to the role of Senior Vice President of Member and Government Relations at Land O’Lakes, as a successful crop and dairy farmer along with his advocacy experience and board involvement with many agricultural organizations. Pete has been a leader in working with legislators on important ag policy issues including the Farm Bill, climate, trade and immigration. He also served as an Ag Policy Advisor to the Administration for the United States Department of Agriculture and the Office of the United States Trade Representative; in addition he was named Director of the Year in 2018 by the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives.  Pete is a fourth-generation farmer, having led Meadow Brook Dairy Farms, LLC, with his wife Shellie and their three adult children.

We invite members of the press to join us for this important discussion about the anticipated updates affecting dairy farmers in the upcoming Farm Bill.

FMMO Hearing Shows Strength of Co-ops

Posted on by Alan Bjerga

USDA’s Federal Milk Marketing Order hearing in Carmel, IN, is providing the dairy industry with mountains of valuable information and insight that goes well beyond facts and figures.

The hearing isn’t only about shaping milk pricing; it’s also showing what needs improving in our industry, and it’s an opportunity to demonstrate what keeps dairy strong. And nothing is on display more emphatically than the power of dairy farmers and the cooperatives they own, and the importance of the cooperative structure to future progress in dairy, at all levels of production, processing and marketing.

Our breadth of membership and depth of milk marketing expertise has risen to every occasion during this hearing, relentlessly advancing the consensus proposal we adopted after two years of exhaustive study and discussion.

That plan, the only comprehensive solution that adequately makes the adjustments the FMMO system needs, would not have come about in the first place were we not able to rely on our farmer-cooperative members and staff to lead the industry. And without the unified voice a farmer cooperative provides its members in policy discussions, we never would have been able to achieve the unanimity in our membership that was necessary for USDA to take up our plan at all.

That final point is important. Cooperative membership holds multiple benefits for member-owners, beginning with having a guaranteed market for milk each day, but adding up to much more. Cooperatives provide technical expertise and risk-management assistance. Cooperatives pool supplies and capital, finance exports, enhance farmers’ bargaining position with proprietary processors, and even enable those farmers to become processors themselves.

These benefits have allowed dairy farmers to build multimillion-dollar processing plants in local communities, access needed financial resources, and capitalize on efficiencies in areas like milk hauling. Membership in a cooperative is the best way, and sometimes the only way, for a dairy farmer to get products to market and earn a decent return from doing so. Simply put, cooperatives make farmers stronger.

But for cooperatives to remain strong, they also need their members to actively engage.

That’s why it’s important to always remain vigilant against any effort to weaken cooperatives by limiting their ability to speak with a unified voice or adequately represent the best interests of their members. From time to time we hear of efforts on Capitol Hill or elsewhere to dilute the power of cooperatives to speak with one voice on votes on issues such as the Federal Milk Marketing Order system. Offered under the guise of encouraging individual choice, in practice these efforts are more like “divide and conquer” – chipping away at the benefits cooperatives provide by weakening their ability to pursue their members’ best interests.

Such efforts tend to be pursued by the same interests that, in the end, would rather that co-ops go away: companies that would prefer the benefits (to them) of vertical integration; agribusinesses that would rather not bargain with co-ops to get a better price for farmers; individual farmers who don’t feel they “need” co-ops to succeed (even as they buy inputs and sign contracts with them); and political ideologues who just don’t like the idea of farmers helping one another for mutual benefit. We’ve always been able to successfully resist them because, in the end, we use the very power we have to work together and protect our members’ interests.

As we celebrate October as National Co-op Month, with Farm Bill discussions underway and FMMO modernization making its way toward an eventual producer vote, we stand ever ready to defend cooperatives and their principles. Every day, at the federal order hearing in Indiana, we’re proving just how valuable to dairy the cooperative model remains. And every day across America, on farms, in milk trucks and in supermarkets, we remain proud of all we do to facilitate orderly marketing of milk and keep this nation nourished – and will continue to do so, with a strong, united voice, for many years to come.

 

Jim Mulhern

President & CEO, NMPF

 

 

 

 

 

CWT Assists with 1.1 Millon Pounds of Dairy Product Export Sales

Posted on by Khadija Gibson-White

ARLINGTON, VA – Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) member cooperatives accepted nine offers of export assistance from CWT that helped them capture sales contracts for 1.0 million pounds (468 MT) of American-type cheese and 44,000 pounds (20 MT) of whole milk powder. The product is going to customers in Asia, Middle East-North Africa and South America, and will be delivered from September through December 2023.

CWT-assisted member cooperative year-to-date export sales total 36.3 million pounds of American-type cheeses, 908,000 pounds of butter (82% milkfat), 26,000 pounds of anhydrous milkfat, 38.6 million pounds of whole milk powder and 6.9 million pounds of cream cheese. The products are going to 25 countries in five regions. These sales are the equivalent of 692.6 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis.

Assisting CWT members through the Export Assistance program positively affects all U.S. dairy farmers and cooperatives by fostering the competitiveness of U.S. dairy products in the global marketplace and helping member cooperatives gain and maintain world market share for U.S. dairy products. As a result, the program has helped significantly expand the total demand for U.S. dairy products and the demand for U.S. farm milk that produces those products.

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

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The Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) Export Assistance program is funded by voluntary contributions from dairy cooperatives and individual dairy farmers. The money raised by their investment is being used to strengthen and stabilize the dairy farmers’ milk prices and margins.

NMPF’S GALEN DISCUSSES CHANGING FLUID MILK PRICING SYSTEM

Posted on by Chris Galen

Chris Galen, NMPF’s senior vice president of member services and governance, discusses the fifth week of USDA’s national hearing on Federal Order modernization, which focused on returning to the “higher of” Class I fluid milk price system.  Galen also discussed what may happen to the hearing process if the federal government shuts down in October.

 

All the Cool Kids (and Their Parents!) are Eating Cottage Cheese

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

For those of you not yet in the know, cottage cheese is the It Dairy Product of 2023. That may be hard to believe, since it seems like only yesterday that Korean music group BTS was making “Butter” ubiquitous — but like milk, the zeitgeist flows. So move over, K-Pop superstars – curds and whey haven’t been moving this fast since the spider sat next to Miss Muffet.

The hype is significant, but the product lives up to it. We’ve read about it in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. We’ve seen it on TikTok, where the high-protein snack is being featured in all sorts of creative recipes, like cottage cheese and mustard, cottage cheese in cookie dough, and cottage cheese as a base for ice cream. But most importantly, we’ve seen it in sales, and in new consumers, as shown via some number-crunching from our friends at Dairy Management Inc.:

Revenues are up, and that’s not just due to inflation – consumption is rising as well. Most importantly, more people are eating cottage cheese, period, and that builds a base for continued growth.

Breaking it down further: Cottage cheese’s success isn’t merely a media perception. It’s real, and it’s broad-based. While nearly half of all new consumers are coming from the social-media-savvy Gen Z and Millennial sets, the other half comes from older generations, with the most growth by far coming from Generation X, a cohort decidedly less dedicated to TikTok than their younger counterparts. (Why Gen X? Is it an attempt to gain a tasty dairy fix with less fat, right at the age where waistlines are more difficult to tame? Nostalgia for their childhoods in the 1970s and 1980s, the last time cottage cheese was so central to American diets? Maybe they’re just smarter than other generations – after all, You Live, You Learn.)

In any case, cottage cheese is reasserting itself in ways not seen in decades. The cool kids are eating it – and so are their parents. Its success shows yet again how dairy remains resilient, adaptable, and innovative. And with that, we can only wonder, what’s next?

Anyone care for a glass of whole milk?

Driving Interest From Butter Bombs to Cookies

Posted on by Alan Bjerga

By Christopher Galen, Executive Director, The American Butter Institute

In a year when dairy commodities have been hit hard by slumping prices, butter has remained at the head of the class, barely dipping below $2.50 per pound at the wholesale level and recently rebounding to $2.75 per pound heading into the holiday baking season. Part of the reason for the strong demand, even with high inflation over the past two years, has been the American Butter Institute’s consumer awareness campaign about the value of butter in so many uses.

Our “Go Bold With Butter” campaign — funded mostly through the national dairy checkoff — reminds consumers of how useful butter is compared to plant-based oils and spreads. It also offers new recipes and product use ideas, from butter boards to butter bombs. You’ve probably heard of butter boards; basically, they are party-ready charcuterie trays featuring softened butter rather than meats and cold cuts. Meanwhile, butter bombs are a social media-worthy creation of a hollow sphere of butter filled either with savory ingredients like herbs, which people can melt on a grilled steak, or sweet ingredients like cinnamon sugar, suitable for use on breakfast foods like pancakes.

We also recently started a new consumer education program we’re calling “Butter Bits.” These are digestible snippets of friendly education we are sharing on social media that highlight butter as the solution to everyday cooking and baking challenges. This series of videos will follow a problem-and-solution format in a fast-paced, engaging, and entertaining way.

Since we are approaching the prime Christmas cookie-baking season, one of our regular seasonal promotions is our recipe contest. Each fall, the contest invites consumers to submit as many original cookie recipes as they wish. The “Go Bold With Butter” experts narrow the field of entrants to a few dozen and then bake up a (baker’s) dozen of the finalists to determine the best of that year’s class. The contest is open from now until November 1, and the rules and entry requirements are at www.goboldwithbutter.com.

Butter has clearly won the hearts, minds, and stomachs of many consumers whose preference for real dairy over vegetable spreads in the past generation has forced competitors to start calling their margarines “vegan butter.” But we can’t rest on our laurels: The “Go Bold With Butter” campaign reminds us that even though retail butter prices may rise, the elevated value real butter offers is worth it.

This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on September 18, 2023.