Tag: dairy export

Dairy Maintains Momentum Through Turbulence

Posted on by Rachel Ravencraft

It doesn’t really need to be said, because evidence is everywhere. But it’s worth repeating, in light of how easy it is to lose focus among turbulence in labor, trade and politics: Dairy’s future is incredibly bright.

Any skepticism toward that idea can quickly be countered with about 10 billion reasons. That’s the dollar amount of investments in new dairy processing capacity that’s coming online between 2023 and 2026, according to an NMPF analysis. Ultimately, these investments are an investment in the U.S. dairy farmer.

From Washington state to Georgia, manufacturers are placing their bets on increased consumer demand for dairy products. State-of-the-art facilities are promising to put affordable, nutritious dairy foods on store shelves and dinner plates in the United States and around the world. The processing growth is creating new outlets for dairy farm production, a tide that lifts all boats across the industry.

And the realization that growing consumer demand isn’t just a forecast: It’s current reality.

  • U.S. fluid-milk consumption rose last year for the first time since 2009. Milk’s market share versus plant-based imposters continues to rise (as if nut drinks were ever truly a threat in the first place).
  • Cottage cheese has emerged as the go-to snack food for Generation Z.
  • And per capita overall U.S. dairy demand continues at levels last seen in the 1950s.

All that is a tribute to the fact that, even with all the diet diversification since then, dairy remains a bedrock of American diets, accessible to all, affordable, and trusted. It’s also a tribute to the industry’s vision and how long-term producer investment in the dairy checkoff has encouraged innovation in new research, technologies, and products.

Overseas sales remain a bright spot for the industry as well. That may seem surprising, given all the headlines of volatility in global trade as the United States tries to reset global commerce. But it’s true: In 2025 through May, the value of U.S. dairy exports was $3.873 billion, 13% higher than the same period last year, when they were $3.422 billion.

That’s a powerful testament to the resilience of U.S. dairy producers and exporters who work around the clock, managing and building relationships that are being heavily tested this year. While overall year-to-date sales volumes are slightly down, and Chinese retaliatory tariffs have heavily weighed down sales to that market, higher-value products like high protein whey products have grown 8% by volume and 30% by value year-to-date. Similarly, U.S. cheese exports are up 7% by volume and 18% by value when compared to 2024 exports through May.

Recent progress in new trade deals with trade partners such as Indonesia also brings encouragement that eventually trade waters will calm, with new opportunities possible for U.S. dairy producers as the turbulence ebbs. Thank you, U.S. Dairy Export Council, thank you NMPF member cooperatives, thank you, NEXT Program, and most all thank you, dairy farmers, for keeping this momentum going.

All this, of course, isn’t meant to give short shrift to the significant challenges ahead. At NMPF we are well aware of the workforce challenges facing dairy farms as a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration disrupts agricultural workforces. Current trade success so far doesn’t mean policy upheaval can’t damage or reverse progress, nor that export momentum will stay the same if new trade policies don’t improve global access opportunities. And consumer confidence faces misinformation threats that only become more sophisticated.

But heading into August, when Congress goes back home and policymaking hits a temporary pause, we at NMPF couldn’t be prouder to represent a growing, thriving industry — not one that’s free from challenges, but one that meets the challenges at hand. Dairy’s momentum becomes our momentum. That momentum is significant. It augurs well for the months and years to come.

Gregg Doud

President & CEO, NMPF

 

CWT-Assisted Dairy Export Sales Kick 2022 Off with 166 Million Pounds

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

CWT member cooperatives secured 106 contracts in January, kicking 2022 off by adding 15 million pounds of American-type cheeses, 2.0 million pounds of whole milk powder and 1.7 million pounds of cream cheese to CWT-assisted sales in 2022. These products will go customers in Asia, Central America, the Caribbean, Middle East-North Africa and South America, and will be shipped from January 2022 through July 2022.

CWT-assisted 2022 dairy product sales contracts year-to-date total the same as above; 15 million pounds of American-type cheese, 1.7 million pounds of cream cheese and 2.0 million pounds of whole milk powder. This brings the total milk equivalent for the year to 166 million pounds on a milkfat basis. Over the last 12 months, CWT assisted sales are the equivalent of 1.444 billion pounds of milk on a milkfat basis.

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.

Dairy Urges U.S. to Emphasize Trade in Congressional Hearing

Posted on by Alan Bjerga

National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) First Vice Chairman and U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) board member Simon Vander Woude encouraged the U.S. government to prioritize expanded market access opportunities for U.S. dairy exports at a House Subcommittee for Livestock and Foreign Agriculture hearing today focused on trade policies and priorities.

Vander Woude and his wife, Christine, operate a 3,200-head dairy in Merced, CA. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of California Dairies, Inc. (CDI), the largest dairy farmer-owned cooperative in California and the second largest in the United States. With sixty percent of the cooperative’s milk powder sold to foreign markets, CDI’s 360 family-owned dairy farms strongly rely on U.S. trade policy tools to keep export markets for their products open and growing.

“I think Chairman Costa and Ranking Member Johnson for the opportunity to testify today about U.S. trade policies and priorities impacting the U.S dairy industry. Despite all the growth and success the dairy industry has enjoyed on the export front over the past two decades, we could be doing even better with a level playing field,” said Vander Woude. “While trade is all too often disparaged in this country and its benefits sold short, our competitors are busy forging new agreements. We farmers need a proactive trade policy to keep pace and continue to increase sales to support the good farm and manufacturing jobs our industry creates.”

Vander Woude stressed in his testimony the urgency of expanding access to key dairy markets like the UK, Asia (Japan, Southeast Asia, China) and the Middle East to catch up with dairy competitors whose countries have aggressively sought trade agreements over the past decade. Vander Woude also highlighted other policy priorities significantly impacting U.S. dairy operations, including the current supply chain crisis, securing long-term relief from Chinese retaliatory tariffs, and implementation and enforcement of existing trade agreements, including USMCA.

“As Simon outlined so well to the House Livestock and Foreign Agriculture subcommittee today, exports are essential to the health of dairy farmers and to our wider industry,” said Jim Mulhern, NMPF president and CEO. “New access into markets like Canada and Japan last year was a welcome first step, but still far less than what our farmers need to remain competitive globally. The United States needs to begin moving forward again with trade agreements and other policies that expand foreign market opportunities to help family dairy farms thrive and support the thousands of jobs that depend on dairy across this country.”

“Sound trade policy that opens doors for American-made products takes time to negotiate and the time is ripe for laying that foundation,” said Krysta Harden, USDEC president and CEO. “With the administration and Congress having charted progress on many domestic priorities, now is the time for the U.S. government to take a proactive approach to tearing down both tariff and nontariff trade barriers. We also need forward-looking solutions to the nation’s supply chain issues that are hindering U.S. exports, particularly in markets where America’s farmers are at a disadvantage to our competitors.”

Read full testimony here.

U.S. Dairy Highlights Supply Chain Challenges at White House Roundtable

Posted on by Alan Bjerga

National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) and U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) Executive Vice President for Policy Jaime Castaneda joined members of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force to discuss the challenges facing the export industry regarding current supply chain disruptions.

The virtual roundtable held today featured a handful of groups in the agricultural export industry. NMPF and USDEC are pleased that the supply chain issues adversely affecting U.S. dairy exports are gaining broader attention.

“These issues warrant the focus of the entire federal government in order to address the negative economic effects on both businesses and consumers from these challenges,” said Castaneda. “This discussion was a first positive step which we hope will continue to drive high-level attention to the obstacles affecting U.S. supply chains and exports.”

Since the onset of COVID in early 2020, supply chains have been severely imbalanced, with significant consequences for many American industries. USDEC, NMPF, and other agriculture organizations and companies have been leading the policy push for supply chain improvements to mitigate congestion limiting U.S. exports and in particular ensuring that containers leave U.S. ports full of agricultural products.

During a Nov. 3 U.S. House Agriculture Committee hearing, Mike Durkin, President and CEO of Leprino Foods, noted that “this export crisis may well result in irreparable harm to American agriculture as customers around the world are questioning the U.S. dairy industry’s reliability as a supplier.”

NMPF and USDEC expressed appreciation for the opportunity to share with the White House Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force how the Administration can help address the nation’s supply chain issues, and specifically, focus its attention on the challenges facing the U.S. dairy industry, shippers, and exporters.

The organizations have also urged the administration to convene a meeting with food and agriculture industry CEOs to discuss how the White House and Congress can take immediate action to implement additional measures, such as passing ocean shipping reform legislation, addressing critical transportation industry labor and shipping equipment shortages, and other steps that will help American agriculture producers reach their foreign markets effectively.

U.S. Dairy Urges Further Work to Address EU Ag Barriers as Trade Relations Improve

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

As the United States and the European Union (EU) announced a five-year detente in aircraft case tariffs today, the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) and National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) welcomed the break-through while also urging that further steps be taken by the EU to ensure that food and agricultural trade is not upended in the months to come.

“The bilateral commitment announced at the U.S.-EU Leaders Summit to resolve the aircraft disputes can help to normalize trade in sectors that have been harmed by retaliatory tariffs, but more work remains to get U.S.-EU trade relations on the right path,” said Krysta Harden, USDEC President and CEO. “The U.S. needs a holistic approach to Europe’s continued attempts to disrupt international trade so that our exporters have a dependable and more reasonable playing field on which to compete.”

“U.S. exporters continually have to chase new mandates by the European Union to retain our current access, even when there are no safety concerns with American dairy products,” said Jim Mulhern, NMPF President and CEO. “Too often dairy trade with the EU is a one-way street. The EU’s frequent approach to import requirements is to mandate prescriptive procedures that U.S. dairy exporters need to make time-consuming changes in order to conform just to retain access to that market for our safe products. The products we export today are entirely safe; new EU mandates that would seek to force the U.S. to change our regulatory system match theirs would do nothing to enhance that.”

NMPF and USDEC noted that the U.S. has the safest food supply in the world and was the first dairy industry globally to achieve international certification for its animal care program. EU efforts to impose their own process-focused regulations on their trading partners run counter to the EU’s international commitments and appear designed simply to layer added cost and complications upon imported products to discourage trade. From geographical indications to overly prescriptive health certificates, the EU’s approach to managing trade has been to hamper competition rather than to let it flourish. To continue to move transatlantic trade relations forward, the EU’s underlying approach to agricultural trade must change.

Members of Congress are also calling for the EU to take steps to help advance transatlantic trade relations by addressing looming new EU import requirements that threaten to upend trade in the coming months. Yesterday, Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI), Jackie Walorski (R-IN), Jim Costa (D-CA), and John Katko (R-NY) wrote to the EU’s Ambassador to the U.S. Stavros Lambrinidis, calling on the EU to delay implementation of new and excessive dairy certification requirements until U.S. and EU negotiators can reach a mutually agreed solution.

NMPF and USDEC Welcome Bipartisan Congressional Support to Enforce USMCA Dairy Provisions

Posted on by Theresa Sweeney

From Krysta Harden, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) and Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF):

“On behalf of America’s dairy farmers, processors, and exporters we thank Representatives Ron Kind (D-WI), Tom Reed (R-NY), and their colleagues in both parties for their leadership in calling for USTR to fully enforce USMCA provisions on Canada’s administration of its dairy tariff rate quotas,” said Krysta Harden, President and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC). “Canada has failed to take the necessary action to be in compliance with its obligations under USMCA by restricting access to the TRQs.”

“We appreciate the bipartisan work from Members of Congress to support America’s dairy industry on this important trade issue,” said Jim Mulhern, President and CEO of the National Milk Producers Federation. “Canada’s failure to take action over the past six months to fix the administration of its TRQs limits the ability of American dairy farmers and workers to benefit from the access that was negotiated in the agreement.”

USDEC and NMPF have closely monitored Canada’s actions regarding its USMCA commitments even prior to the Agreement entering into force. Canada has allocated its TRQs in a manner designed to discourage full use of the TRQs and limit imports of U.S. dairy products. Specifically, Canada is reserving the bulk of quota access to processors, who have little incentive to import U.S. dairy products, and are not providing fair or equitable procedures in administering the TRQs.

Leading this effort with Reps. Kind and Reed were Representatives Antonio Delgado (D-NY), Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (R-PA), Suzan DelBene (D-WA), Dusty Johnson (R-SD), Jim Costa (D-CA), and David Valadao (R-CA).

Both organizations fully support calls from Congress for USTR to move forward with further enforcement action to resolve this issue.