Krysta Harden, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council, discusses the value of USDA support for U.S. agricultural exports in an interview with RFD-TV from the World Food Prize in Des Moines, IA. The department said Oct. 24 it plans to devote $2.3 billion from the Commodity Credit Corporation to promoting better market opportunities for U.S. agricultural producers and expanding food aid to support communities in need around the world, a move advocated for by NMPF and USDEC.
Tag: dairy industry
NMPF’s Jonker brings the IDF World Dairy Summit home
NMPF Chief Science Officer Jamie Jonker connects the themes of the World Dairy Summit, which concluded in Chicago on Thursday, to advancing the interests of U.S. dairy farmers. The summit, hosted by the United States for the first time since 1994, had attendees from 55 countries and activities from technical panels to farm tours.
NMPF’s Jonker Welcomes the World to U.S. Dairy
NMPF Chief Science Officer Jamie Jonker discusses the International Dairy Federation World Dairy Summit taking place in Chicago this week in an interview with RFD-TV. The summit, which is being hosted by the United States for the first time since 1994, brings together dairy experts from around the world and is proving to be a great showcase for U.S. dairy excellence.
NMPF’s Bjerga on How to Learn More About FMMO
NMPF Executive Vice President for Communications and Industry Relations Alan Bjerga offers an update on where the USDA’s Federal Milk Marketing Order hearing stands as it goes on hiatus until late November. Bjerga also discusses the importance of the IDF-World Dairy Summit in Chicago and where the public can go to learn more about the FMMO discussion, in an interview with WEKZ radio, Janesville, WI.
FMMO Hearing Shows Strength of Co-ops
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
Milk Prices on the Rise
NMPF’S GALEN DISCUSSES CHANGING FLUID MILK PRICING SYSTEM
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.
Driving Interest From Butter Bombs to Cookies
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.
NMPF’s Cain Breaks Down FMMO Hearing Progress
NMPF Senior Director of Economic Research & Analysis Stephen Cain discusses progress thus far in USDA’s Federal Milk Marketing Order hearing on the Agriculture of America podcast. “We haven’t had a major update like this in over two decades, so it’s time for an update, and we’re trying to make sure we do it right,” Cain said. “So it’s going a go slowly, but we’re making progress and we’re moving through a lot of the key issues here to make sure that the orders are operating as effectively as they can.”
Butter Buoys Milk Prices as Inflation Ebbs
IDF World Dairy Summit Comes at a Great Time
The International Dairy Federation’s World Dairy Summit will be in the United States this year. Shawna Morris, senior vice president of trade policy for the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, says the summit is coming to the U.S. at a good time. “We had a record year in exports last year, we’re very well-poised to continue to grow in the years to come, and we’re leading on so many of the sustainability fronts that are such an increasing focus for international markets,” she said.
