News for Dairy Co-Ops

USDA’s proposed plan for Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) modernization release July 1 reflected years of painstaking NMPF efforts in crafting a comprehensive plan and building consensus across dairy, leading to recommendations that will set dairy up for success.

The proposal, which is open for comment through August, comes after USDA examined hearing briefs submitted by participants in 2023’s record-long federal order hearing. NMPF again led with its comprehensive approach to improved milk pricing, offering the department detailed proposals that worked to ensure benefits for farms in all regions, of all sizes.

“NMPF is heartened that much of what we proposed after more than two years of policy development, and another year of testimony and explanation, is reflected in USDA’s recommended FMMO modernization plan,” NMPF President and CEO Gregg Doud said in a statement the day the plan was released.

“Crafting an effective milk-pricing system for farmers is complex and requires a careful balance. USDA’s plan acknowledges that complexity and, while not matching our proposal in every detail, looks largely in keeping with the comprehensive approach painstakingly determined by the work of dairy farmers and their cooperatives over the past three years,” Doud said. “We look forward to examining this proposal topic-by-topic, gathering input regarding the various needs of our members nationwide, and adding their insights as this process moves toward a vote of producers.”

Doud elaborated on USDA’s plan, and its relationship to proposals by NMPF and others, in NMPF’s monthly CEO’s Corner column.

The proposal is now in a 60-day comment period. NMPF’s member-led task force on FMMO is meeting July 11 to discuss the plan and offer member input, while the following day NMPF’s Co-op Communicators Committee is discussing publicity and farmer-communications efforts to educate the industry on the proposal. After USDA reviews public comments, a final plan will be put to a vote of producers, likely in the early months of 2025.

NMPF leadership expressed confidence that farmers would soon see a fairer federal system for milk pricing and highlighted dairy farmers’ robust response to H5N1 influenza in dairy cattle at the organization’s Board of Directors meeting June 4-5.

“Even with all the stresses on the farm, there’s still not a better industry,” said Randy Mooney, a dairy farmer from Rogersville, MO, and a member of the Dairy Farmers of America cooperative, in remarks at the meeting. “I’m proud of where we’re at, producing high quality, nutritious food for the consumer. It’s amazing how dairy farmers do it.”

Board members spent two days reviewing recent policy developments, including Federal Milk Marketing Order deliberations, the progress of the 2024 Farm Bill, and up-to-date information on H5N1, which has led to significant federal and farmer investments in biosecurity and testing. NMPF Chief Science Officer Dr. Jamie Jonker led discussion on the issue.

The meeting was held with NMPF’s annual Young Cooperators fly-in (see separate story), in which young dairy farmers meet with lawmakers to advocate for the industry. Dairy farmers urged passage of a Farm Bill, expanded market access for U.S. dairy products and federal action toward integrity in milk labeling, restricting the use of dairy terms to animal products in line with Food and Drug Administration standards.

The Board also examined potential improvements to the NMPF-led Cooperatives Working Together program (see separate story), the 21-year-old farmer self-help initiative that is up for renewal after 2024. A member task force has been weighing a range of options to expand the use of CWT’s export assistance program. The NMPF Board approved a series of five directional goals for CWT as it considers the program’s parameters in 2025 and beyond.

The board also elected three new members: Dave Peterson of Minnesota, representing Associated Milk Producers, Inc.; Alex Peterson of Missouri, representing Dairy Farmers of America; and Mike Schoneveld of Washington, representing Darigold.

The task force of farmers and cooperative leaders evaluating Cooperatives Working Together’s future on June 24 approved a series of improvements for the self-help program when it is renewed after 2024.

Following an extensive review of CWT’s current operations and an evaluation of the potential value of an expanded export assistance program, the task force endorsed several detailed proposals developed and refined by three working groups of cooperative staff experts in the areas of Product Mix; Bid Process Adjustments; and Market Development.

The task force’s decision will now be reviewed July 9 by the NMPF Executive Committee, and later by the full NMPF Board of Directors. The recommendations would then become part of the next CWT program cycle that begins Jan. 1.

The working group recommendations include updates to or added resources within the following program areas:

• All cheese varieties will be eligible for CWT’s price gap support
• CWT will create targeted pilot programs to address tariff coverage for value-added skim milk powder sales to Southeast Asia, and a target market premium for cheese sales to Central America & the Caribbean
• CWT will offer fat-equivalent support for the following products: ESL/aseptic fluid milk; evaporated/condensed milk; and ice cream
• CWT will increase its operating program bid flexibility to extend eligible delivery periods to 12 months, and remove volume limits on a trial basis
• CWT staff will provide increased insight on bid acceptance parameters, sharing a brief summary with weekly offers explaining shifts in support levels; and
• CWT will create an advisory group to provide strategic direction and market development support, with a Phase I emphasis on pre-competitive support that provides opportunities for all cooperatives to participate.

The task force met earlier at NMPF’s June Board meeting to receive a preview of working group activity and to review a recent assessment of CWT’s impact on milk prices.

During its meeting, the Board of Directors approved five objectives to pursue as part of the renewal effort for the CWT program after 2024. They include:

• CWT should seek to achieve the highest participation of cooperatives in the export assistance program
• The contribution made to CWT should be at a level that maximizes the benefit back to dairy producer milk prices, not to exceed 4 cents per cwt.
• CWT’s export assistance program should promote consistent supplies of U.S. dairy products into foreign markets. Assistance offered should create competitively landed values for U.S. dairy products that will impact milk prices paid to U.S. dairy producers
• CWT should enhance program operations (e.g., processes and program reviews) including establishment of an operating committee to help direct those functions; and
• CWT should explore market development opportunities within its overall program budget structure.

June CWT-Assisted Export Sales Top 5.4 Million Pounds

CWT member cooperatives secured 56 contracts in June, adding 5.4 million pounds of product to CWT-assisted sales in 2024, an amount equal to 47.8 million pounds of milk on a milkfat basis. These products will go to customers in Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, Middle East-North Africa, Oceania and South America and will be shipped from June through December 2024.

Exporting dairy products is critical to the viability of dairy farmers and their cooperatives across the country. Whether or not a cooperative is actively engaged in exporting cheese, butter, anhydrous milkfat, cream cheese, or whole milk powder, moving products into world markets is essential. CWT provides a means to move domestic dairy products to overseas markets by helping to overcome U.S. dairy’s trade disadvantages.

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.

NMPF hosted young dairy farmer leaders from across the United States June 3-4 for the National Young Cooperators (YC) Program’s annual Dairy Policy and Legislative Forum in Washington, D.C.

Forty-nine young dairy farmers and cooperative coordinators from 17 states representing ten member cooperatives participated in discussions about political engagement and dairy policy issues along with training on how to be an effective advocate and spokesperson for dairy. YCs then headed to Capitol Hill to speak with members of Congress and their staff about NMPF priorities including the 2024 Farm Bill, dairy labeling and foreign market access.

“There are so many things that affect us, but they don’t affect us in a way that we see every day,” Matthew Lansing, an Iowa dairy farmer who co-chairs the National YC Program, said in a Dairy Defined Podcast released before the fly-in. “Keeping involved and up to date as much as we can and pushing for things that we need on a farm on a day-to-day basis is really key for us to propel forward into the future and be what we need to be for consumers going forward.”

Speakers for this year’s event included NMPF Executive Committee members Jay Bryant, president and CEO of Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association, and Doug Chapin, chairman of Michigan Milk Producers Association. Both shared about their backgrounds and leadership experiences while emphasizing the importance of political engagement. YCs also toured the U.S. Capitol with Rep. Marc Molinaro, R-NY and heard remarks from Rep. Kim Schrier, D-WA, at this year’s congressional breakfast.

Since 1950, the National YC Program has provided emerging dairy leaders with a better understanding of issues facing farmers and their cooperatives. The program is open to younger and beginning dairy farmers who own or are employed on a dairy farm that is a member of one of NMPF’s member cooperatives. Click here and check the National YC Program box to stay up to date on program activities.

National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Program updates to its Animal Care and Workforce Development program areas took effect July 1, showcasing its commitment to continuous improvement within the dairy industry.

The program’s foundational pillar, Animal Care, features updated standards surrounding euthanasia, fitness for transport, calf management, and continuing education. With the consultation of the governance structure, comprised of producers, animal scientists, cooperatives and processor staff and veterinarians, Animal Care Version 5 aims for clarity and consistency across program evaluations. Version 5 standards will be in effect through June 30, 2027.

Workforce Development Version 2 updates the evaluation tool involved, restructuring the evaluation to better group questions of similar themes. Seven new questions also were crafted to further strengthen the tool in areas of communication, clarity in roles, and performance management. Training for Evaluators began in May and will continue throughout the year.

Environmental Stewardship Version 3 will also be launching later this summer. The update will integrate a new greenhouse gas model to offer updated science and the ability to run what-if scenarios to assess practice and technology options. The Ruminant Farm Systems model, led out of Cornell University, will be the new engine for FARM Environmental Stewardship, supporting dairy industry efforts to reach GHG (Greenhouse gas) neutral by 2050 and responding to growing customer requests.

The Dairy Margin Coverage Program rose sharply in May to levels well above the floor needed to trigger payments to dairy farmers, with milk prices rocketing past increasing feed costs to bolster dairy bottom lines.

Feed prices in May sharply reversed a falling trend of recent months to gain $0.58/cwt of milk from a month before, as measured by the DMC feed cost formula. All three formula components contributed measurably to the boost. Even so, May milk prices gained $1.50/cwt from April, rising to $22.00/cwt boosting the DMC margin by $0.92/cwt from the prior month to $10.52/cwt.

Available forecasts at the end of June indicate that the DMC margin will average about $11.50/cwt during 2024. This would be the second-highest average margin for a calendar year since margin protection became the basic federal safety net program for dairy.

Dairy policy priorities continue to be reflected in Congressional farm bill plans, with Senate Agriculture Committee Ranking Member Sen. John Boozman, R-AR, releasing Senate Republicans’ farm bill framework on June 11.

Like the framework previously issued by Senate Democrats and the bill passed by the House Agriculture Committee in May, Boozman’s framework includes several important dairy policy priorities. It also marks another key step toward enacting a farm bill.

Boozman’s plan provides “a strong farm bill framework that marks another important step toward enacting a bipartisan farm bill into law this year,” said NMPF President & CEO Gregg Doud in a statement.

The Senate Republican framework includes positive dairy provisions, such as:

• Extending the Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) Program through 2029; updating production history for participating dairies to be based on the highest production year of 2021, 2022, or 2023; and extending the ability for producers to receive a 25% premium discount for locking in five years of coverage
• Requiring USDA to conduct mandatory plant cost studies every two years to provide better data to inform future make allowance conversations, a key component of NMPF’s Federal Milk Marketing Order modernization proposal
• Supporting voluntary, producer-led conservation programs, such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program
• Boosting funding for critical dairy trade promotion programs and protecting the use of common food names worldwide
• Supporting the bipartisan, House-passed Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act to reverse the underconsumption of nutritious milk in schools;
• Increasing funding for animal health initiatives and programs; and
• Advancing the bipartisan Innovative FEED Act to expedite and modernize approval of animal feed ingredients that have a proven track record of reducing enteric methane emissions.

The current farm bill officially expires on Sept. 30, but most core programs run until Dec. 31, giving the congressional agriculture committees until the end of the calendar year to complete work on a new farm bill before a new Congress is sworn in.

With the Sept. 30 federal fiscal year deadline fast approaching, the House Appropriations Committee has begun advancing its fiscal year 2025 spending bills for each of the federal government’s departments and agencies.

The House Agriculture-FDA Appropriations Subcommittee on June 11 approved its 2025 spending bill, including important dairy priorities in next year’s funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

The measure’s full spending details will become available when the full committee takes it up later this month, but it includes NMPF-supported language to reverse the reduction in the maximum monthly milk allowance in USDA’s final foods package rule for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), which helps mothers and young children have access to key nutrients they otherwise may lack. NMPF is concerned that the final rule will decrease that access via a lower milk maximum.

Outside of the annual spending process, Representatives Elise Stefanik, R-NY, Josh Harder, D-CA, and Derrick Van Orden, R-WI, introduced the bipartisan Protecting Mothers and Infants’ Access to Milk Act on June 26. This bill would reverse the reduction in the WIC maximum monthly milk allowance for the long term, without modifying any other portion of USDA’s final WIC foods package rule. NMPF will work with the bill’s sponsors to advance this bipartisan effort.

NMPF is offering its support and assistance for a pair of supply chain bills offered in June that address shipping container break-ins that are damaging dairy shipments.

Organized crime groups are indiscriminately breaking into intermodal containers traveling on rail from the Midwest to West Coast ports searching for high-value products, with dairy shipments frequently suffering collateral damage. The break-ins have created significant food safety and quality concerns, as well as financial costs for shippers who have no recourse to insurance claims.

Working with a coalition of industry stakeholders, NMPF helped secure $2 million within the FY25 House Homeland Security Appropriations bill dedicated to tackling the break-ins. NMPF also coordinated with and supported the June 25 introduction of the Safeguarding our Supply Chains Act. Led by Representative David Valadao, R-CA, and Brad Schneider, D-IL, the bill would authorize $100 million for fiscal years 2025-2029 to create a crime coordination center within Homeland Security Investigations and an interagency taskforce. The division would serve as a central command for shippers to report break-ins, providing direction to the agency on hot spots to target policing efforts.

NMPF Executive Vice President of Trade Policy and Global Affairs Shawna Morris joined U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) staff in Indonesia from June 18-21 to advance the U.S.-Indonesia Technical Collaboration Project on Dairy and encourage steps to increase dairy trade in what is becoming an increasingly important market.

The trip took place as the country prepares to fulfill a new pledge from incoming president Prabowo Subianto to provide free milk to Indonesian schoolchildren as part of a new school meals program Indonesia plans to launch. Indonesia, meanwhile, is a rising consumer of U.S. dairy, with exports rising 28 percent over the past five years to becoming the second biggest customer in the Southeast Asia region.

A joint effort to provide forward-looking technical and educational support for local dairy producers, the U.S.-Indonesia Technical Collaboration Project on Dairy was spurred by a 2023 National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) trade mission to Indonesia which USDEC President and CEO Krysta Harden joined.

NMPF and USDEC are working with NASDA, the Wisconsin Agriculture Department, New Mexico Department of Agriculture, and New Mexico State University to develop technical education modules that provide to Indonesian small-scale dairy farmers guidance and best practices for achieving sustainable, healthy, and higher-yield dairy production.

NMPF and USDEC staff met with a host of local industry and government leaders, discussing the progress in launching the joint capacity building project as well as the importance of addressing Indonesia’s tariff and non-tariff barriers to unlock complementary U.S. dairy exports that can fully meet the country’s expected higher level of dairy demand.

Strengthening its trade and dairy priorities in Latin America, NMPF and USDEC signed a June 4 memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Colombian Association of Dairy Industry (Asoleche).

The agreement details objectives that the U.S. and Colombian industries will undertake to improve knowledge sharing and eliminate trade barriers between the two countries. The MOU complements similar agreements USDEC and NMPF have made throughout Latin America, including with Sociedad Rural Argentina, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Chilean Federacion Nacional de Productores de Leche (Fedeleche).

Gregg Doud, president and CEO of NMPF, said, “The U.S. and Colombian dairy industries share many of the same values and priorities. We’re excited to work alongside Asoleche to promote positive, sound policies that build a stronger dairy industry in the Americas and internationally.”

NMPF outreach to the dairy community was highlighted by the FARM team in June, as staff shared expertise across the industry.

FARM’s senior director of animal care, Beverly Hampton Phifer, presented Managing an Animal Care Crisis June 5 at the Dairy Welfare Symposium in Kansas City, MO. Dr. Valerie Smith, with Food Safety Net Services, and Hampton Phifer co-presented the efforts of FARM and implementation of the Animal Care Concern Protocol.

Emily Yeiser Stepp, FARM’s executive director, attended the American Dairy Science Association conference June 16-19 in West Palm Beach, FL. Yeiser Stepp presented with Chase DeCoite, Vice President of Food Industry Relations for Dairy Management, Inc., on June 18.  The pair’s presentation, Demonstrating U.S. Dairy’s Commitment to Animal Care, discussed how FARM supports continuous improvement on all U.S. dairy farms and understanding the supply chain’s interest in animal care.

Nicole Ayache, Chief Sustainability Officer at NMPF, discussed FARM’s Environmental Stewardship Version 3 upcoming launch at the Innovation Center for US Dairy Board of Directors meeting on June 27. The Version 3 update is two years in the making, surrounding a new evaluation tool, the Ruminant Farms Systems model (RuFaS), which will support dairy industry efforts to reach GHG neutral by 2050 as well as to respond to growing customer requests.

Other staff highlights included Will Loux, NMPF’s senior vice president for global economic affairs, speaking on the state of the dairy industry to Dairy Management Inc. officers and the Innovation Center in Rosemont, IL, giving an overview of long-term trends of the industry in production, supply and demand.

The NMPF Board of Directors selected five graduate students actively pursuing dairy related fields of research that benefit dairy cooperatives and producers to receive scholarships as part of the 2024 NMPF National Dairy Leadership Scholarship Program. Winners were announced June 4, at NMPF’s Board of Directors meeting in Arlington, VA.

Winners include:

Augustin Olivo, a doctoral candidate in Animal Science at Cornell University, where he is a part of the Nutrient Management Spear Program (NMSP). Olivo’s research and extension work focus is on evaluating and disseminating system analysis tools and performance indicators that support efforts to improve environmental sustainability in dairy systems for New York producers.

Megan Lauber is pursuing her doctorate at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received her Master’s in Dairy Science under the advisement of Dr. Paul Fricke. Her dissertation focuses on integrating basic physiology, management practices and economics to optimize the use of sexed semen in dairy herds.

Grant Finchman is a Master of Science candidate in Ruminant Nutrition at University of Nebraska- Lincoln. His research involves the impact of feeding dried distiller grains with solubles to lactating dairy cattle, looking at whole animal energy utilization and manure biogas production.

Ana Beatriz Montevecchio Bernardino is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Florida. Her research focuses on heat abatement strategies in dairy calves, udder health and pharmaceutical development. More specifically, her current research investigates the effect of a novel non-steroidal anti-inflammatory formulation on welfare of Holstein cows challenged with E. coli.

Lynn Olthof is a doctoral candidate under Dr. Barry Bradford studying dairy management at Michigan State University. Her research studies the economic implications of dairy farm management decisions.

NMPF’s Board of Directors offers scholarships each year to qualified graduate students enrolled in master’s or doctoral programs who are actively pursuing dairy-related fields of research that are of immediate interest to NMPF member cooperatives.

The scholarship program meaningfully assists graduate students and promotes research that benefits the entire dairy community. Donate today to support the National Leadership Scholarship Program.