Dairy Convenes With a Full Policy Agenda

NMPF’s member cooperatives are preparing for our organization’s premier annual event: the Joint Annual Meeting, held in conjunction with the United Dairy Industry Association and the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board. This year’s event is in Phoenix from Oct. 21-23, near one of the country’s most dynamic milk-producing regions. It’s an incredible opportunity to celebrate accomplishments, renew goals and craft strategy for future challenges. As is always the case, NMPF’s farmer and co-op leadership can feel satisfaction with jobs well-done that will position dairy farmers and the entire industry for a positive future.

High on that agenda is Federal Milk Marketing Order Modernization, for which we submitted our final comments earlier this month. USDA’s proposed changes to the FMMO system reflect the principles we laid out in our testimony and earlier comments, principles we arrived at after years of painstaking, methodical work engaging the top minds in in the industry. While we would never pass up an opportunity to suggest improvements (and we didn’t), fundamentally we have no quarrel with USDA and its plan. Barring unexpected, objectionable revisions, we look forward to it being put forward for producer votes expected early next year.

An unheralded part of USDA’s plan is that not only does it propose an update of the current system, it lays out a road map for how to make changes more methodically and easily in the future. There’s a balance between making change too easy, which could destabilize a system, and making it so difficult that it’s intimidating and costly to even attempt. Considering that the last major changes to the FMMO system came in 2000, it’s clear that, to date, the latter scenario has prevailed. That shouldn’t be the case; along with this modernization, future necessary modernization should be simpler. Achieving that is another win for farmers that will create a fairer, more responsive FMMO.

We’ll also be talking a lot about exciting changes to the Cooperatives Working Together program, which for more than two decades has helped U.S. dairy producers and cooperatives further America’s growing share of growing global dairy exports. We emphatically believe this program, updated and fully funded, will blaze a new chapter for U.S. global leadership in dairy exports.

FMMO and CWT alone would be enough to get everyone in Phoenix excited – but there’s much more. We’ll be discussing our industry’s prudent response to the still ongoing H5N1 virus outbreak in dairy cattle, which, after intense concern in the spring, is still with us. We continue to be both a resource and an advocate for dairy farmers on this critical issue. We also are marking this year’s implementation of new FARM program standards, serving up agricultural-sector-leading improvements.

On the policy front, we’ll be talking about our advocacy for the next farm bill and beyond, with important legislative vehicles such as the Innovative Feed Act offering potential pathways for greater dairy prosperity. We also can’t forget about the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, which overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last year — we won’t rest until it’s approved – or the Dairy PRIDE Act, which, slowly but surely, continues to grow in congressional support.