This year is finally starting to feel like the new normal has arrived. The masks are fewer, offices are more full, consumers have returned to restaurants, and kids are back in schools. But in reality, we’ll never return to where we were, and the changes in our industry are impossible not to notice.
This year, we’ve enjoyed record prices. But we’re also experiencing record costs. Dairy exports are at an all-time high, even as supply chains are less reliable than any of us have ever experienced. We’re seeing unparalleled innovation that’s helping enhance our stewardship of land and our animals, but we’re also facing increasing pressure and skepticism from a public and, in some parts of the world, from governments toward how well we’re doing as an industry on these very things. The good news is for us, as all parts of agriculture face similar problems, these challenges play to our strengths. We in dairy have a proven track record of proactively moving and establishing ourselves as a leader in meeting these challenges head on.
That doesn’t just happen. It’s because of the leadership and the vision shown by the farmers, industry professionals and the entire U.S. dairy community. This leadership is only going to become more important in the next few years, as we see even greater pressure from consumers, from customers, and government to show progress on the issues they care about. It won’t be easy. But we know that we can do it, because of the incredibly strong base we’ve built over the last 15+ years of forward leaning engagement on sustainability and climate issues. These are global challenges. But because of our foresight and engagement, we’re in a much better position than our dairy colleagues around the world.
Recently, I was in The Netherlands attending a Global Dairy Platform conference along with several dairy leaders from across Europe, Asia, and New Zealand. I spent a lot of time talking to some of the large dairy players in the world, and what struck me most was the difference in how we’re all dealing with the same challenges. For some of our counterparts, there’s almost a sense of inevitability that dairy production and consumption will decline in the face of the environmental issues before us, almost a sense of resignation and acceptance that consumers were going to consider plant-based substitutes equal to milk, acceptance that dairy products would come from a lab, acceptance that government regulations limiting not just carbon or methane, but ammonia emissions and other environmental concerns. The best that could be done, they seemed to believe, was to manage the decline.