According to the 2017 International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) economic impact study, the US dairy sector generated approximately 60,000 new jobs, raised average pay by 11%, and improved its total effect on the US economy by $41 billion.

According to IDFA’s 2023 Economic effect Study, the aggregate effect of the dairy industry — encompassing the milk, cheese, ice cream, cultured dairy products, and ingredients sectors — was $793.75 billion in the United States. The research, which was presented at the start of National Dairy Month, is done every two years to assess the industry’s influence on local, state, and national economies.

According to recently disclosed data, the dairy business in the United States today supports:

• 3.2 million overall employment, up from 1.018 million in 2021, including 1.078 million in dairy product production.
• Workers in the dairy business will earn $49 billion in direct salaries, up from $42 billion in 2021.
• $72.0 billion in federal, state, and municipal taxes (excluding consumer sales taxes), up from $67.1 billion in 2021 3% of U.S. GDP

“The United States dairy industry is expanding to meet intense global demand, which means more jobs, higher wages, more tax breaks, and more economic growth for communities across the country,” said Michael Dykes, D.V.M., IDFA president and CEO. “Consumers in the United States and around the world recognise U.S. dairy products for their nourishing and delicious qualities, and they are purchasing record amounts of U.S. dairy products.” In turn, American dairy enterprises provide economic advantages to the areas in which they operate.”

The paper also shows how several dairy product categories contribute directly to the US economy, such as:

• Cheese has a direct economic effect of $64.5 billion and supports 59,538 dairy sector employment.
• Milk has a direct economic effect of $50.9 billion and supports 67,995 dairy sector employment.
• Dairy Ingredients: Has a direct economic effect of $20.4 billion and supports 16,552 dairy sector employment.
• Ice cream has a direct economic effect of $11.4 billion and supports 27,066 dairy sector jobs.
• Yoghurt and cultured products have a direct economic effect of $8.3 billion and sustain 10,867 dairy sector employment.

The increase in employment and economic effect comes as demand for American dairy continues to rise. The USDA announced in September 2022 that per capita dairy consumption in the United States increased by 12.4 pounds per person in 2021, following a 50-year increasing trend that began in 1975, when the USDA began measuring yearly consumption.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Ireland’s agricultural industry would be responsible for 38% of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.

The Irish Department of Agriculture said that a paper proposing a 200,000-cow decrease was a “modelling document” and “not final policy.”

Cows will have to be “culled” at a cost of around $650,000 to taxpayers over the next three years to fulfil climate emissions limits, according to a Friday analysis.

The materials were obtained via a freedom of information request made by The Farming Independent.

“The Paper referred to was part of a deliberative process – it is one of a number of modelling documents considered by the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine and is not a final policy decision,” a spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, Food, and the Marine told the Irish Mirror.

According to Ireland’s Environmental Protection Agency, the agricultural sector will account for 38% of national greenhouse gas emissions in 2021.

According to the Irish Mirror, Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue has regularly proposed voluntary dairy reduction initiatives.

According to Reuters, the European Commission approved a $1.6 billion payment last month to buy out cattle producers in the Netherlands in order to decrease nitrogen pollution.

Until the 1980s, the geopolitical relationship that dominated dinnertime conversation was Russia. The Middle East was featured in the 1990s, and now it’s China, with a dash of Russia thrown in for good measure.

However, does China have a significant influence on the daily lives of ordinary Americans?

Dairy producers in the United States will tell you that they do.

“I can’t tell you how many dairies have gone out of business in the state of Utah in the last four months,” said Ron Gibson, President of the Utah Farm Bureau and an Ogden dairy farmer.

“I mean, we’re almost at 100 dairies in the state now.”

“Just 30 years ago, we had 500.”
China’s demand is increasing.

China’s population is estimated to be 1.44 billion people. Naturally, they do not have enough dairy cows to feed the whole nation. As a result, they, like the rest of the world, import what they need.

Historically, the nation has imported powdered milk from countries such as New Zealand, sections of Europe, and, of course, the United States.

According to Ron, they have just begun to minimise their reliance on American milk products.

“The barges are coming from China to America with steel and they’re going home empty because we’re not sending anything back, and that’s a big kick in the gut to agriculture,” he added.

“When those barges return empty, it’s a lost opportunity for a farmer or rancher in the United States of America.”

“We’ve become the last person on the planet they want to buy their products from, and they are not happy with us.”
China’s declining trust in the U.S.

It’s easy to understand how Ron arrived to this conclusion.

China, for example, is helping Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, and they were suspected of flying a spy balloon over the United States until it was shot down in Montana this year.

Tensions between the United States and China are high, and the figures reflect Ron’s fears.

According to the World Trade Centre Utah, the Beehive state sold $2,401,582 in powdered milk to China in 2021. Last year, they only sold $601,659, a 25% decrease from the prior year.

Farmers such as Ron are seeing it personally.

“Last year, we were getting somewhere between $24 and $25 for 100 pounds of milk,” he said.

“It appears that we will receive between $15 and $17 this year.”

“That’s a 40% decrease in income for us, and our costs haven’t dropped one bit.”
However, not all US-China connections are deteriorating.

The World Trade Centre Utah’s Chief of Staff is Stephen LeFevre.

“Overall, the trade relationship has been declining in some ways while remaining constant in others, because our economies are so intertwined,” he stated.

“When I look at agriculture as a whole, it’s fairly stable, but when broken down, livestock and dairy have declined.”

“Specifically, this year and the previous year have been quite low in comparison to previous years.”

The commercial relationship between China and the United States is deep and intricate – both nations depend on each other.

Despite this, ‘economic warfare’ may be conducted, especially between nations that have signed free trade agreements.

“It’s essentially [economic warfare].” “Using economic pressure to persuade a trading partner to change their political or other behaviour,” Stephen stated.

It’s not uncommon; we’ve done it to our partners and they’ve done it to us.

When it comes to the dairy business, Stephen believes it’s unclear if economic warfare is to blame.

“Well, we’ve seen it before… “We’ve seen [trade changes] with other countries just generally as the geopolitical landscape has changed,” he stated.

I believe both the United States and China are beginning to consider the long term. As a result, decreasing dairy trade may be strategic.

“However, they may be diversifying, and it may be easier to get it from a neighbouring country.”
Whether strategic or not, tensions between the United States and China cannot be ignored.

According to Stephen, the tensions between the two nations are difficult to overlook.

“It’s possible that China is beginning to view the United States as an untrustworthy trading partner, and at any moment, they could lose supply of critical or important things,” he added.

As a result, the drop in trade may be a purposeful, strategic pressure from China as a result of tight ties at the highest levels of governance, or they may just be diversifying their supply chains by purchasing from nearby nations such as New Zealand or Australia.

Regardless, the tension is being felt at kitchen tables far from diplomatic chambers, and the consequences are very real for farmers like Ron Gibson.

“I deal with it every night; I was up until two a.m. last night, trying to figure out what we’re going to do… Farmers and ranchers are not doing well; they are genuinely hurting, and our sector as a whole is really in a bad place.”

The U.S. dairy industry grew significantly over the past two years, adding nearly 60,000 new jobs, increasing average wages by 11%, and increasing its total impact on the U.S. economy by $41 billion, according to the latest economic impact report from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA).

IDFA’s 2023 Economic Impact Study, which measures the combined impact of the dairy industry—including the milk, cheese, ice cream, cultured dairy products, and ingredients sectors—showed the U.S. dairy industry’s economic impact totaled $793.75 billion. The report, released at the beginning of National Dairy Month, is conducted every two years to quantify the industry’s impact on local, state and national economies.

The newly released figures indicate that the U.S. dairy industry now supports:

• 3.2 million total jobs, including 1.078 million jobs in dairy product manufacturing, up from 1.018 million jobs in 2021
• $49 billion in direct wages for workers in the dairy industry, up from $42 billion in direct wages in 2021
• $72.0 billion in federal, state and local taxes (not including sales taxes paid by consumers), up from $67.1 million in 2021
• 3% of U.S. GDP

“The U.S. dairy industry is growing to keep pace with intense global demand, and that means more jobs, higher wages, more tax benefits, and more economic growth for communities across the United States,” said Michael Dykes, D.V.M., IDFA president and CEO. “Consumers here in the U.S. and around the world recognize U.S. dairy products for their nourishing and delicious qualities, and they are purchasing U.S. dairy products in record quantities. In turn, American dairy companies are delivering economic benefits to the communities they operate in.”

The report also demonstrates how dairy product categories contribute directly to the U.S. economy, including:

• Cheese: Adds $64.5 billion in direct economic impact and supports 59,538 dairy industry jobs
• Milk: Adds $50.9 billion in direct economic impact and supports 67,995 dairy industry jobs
• Dairy Ingredients: Adds $20.4 billion in direct economic impact and supports 16,552 dairy industry jobs
• Ice Cream: Adds $11.4 billion in direct economic impact and supports 27,066 dairy industry jobs
• Yogurt & Cultured Products: Adds $8.3 billion in direct economic impact and supports 10,867 dairy industry jobs

The growth in jobs and economic impact comes as demand for U.S. dairy continues to grow. In September 2022, the USDA reported that U.S. per capita dairy consumption jumped 12.4 pounds per person in 2021, continuing a 50-year growth trend that started in 1975 when USDA began tracking annual consumption.

The study’s findings are available in an interactive economic impact tool on IDFA’s Dairy Delivers® webpage where users can click on an interactive map of the U.S. to learn how dairy impacts their community. Just select an area of the country that interests you—options include the full U.S., any of the 50 states, or any of the 435 Congressional districts. Once you click on the state and/or district that interests you, select View/Print to generate your own detailed fact sheet or economic impact report.

To learn more, visit www.idfa.org/dairydelivers.

Wisconsin has seen a steady decline in dairy farms over the last decade. In 2003, the state was home to more than 16,000 dairy farms, but a new report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that number is now less than 6,000.

One of the reasons farmers are exiting the industry is because it’s become harder to make a profit from milk. A national trade association of dairy cooperatives hopes to change that by updating the system for pricing and selling milk across the county.

The National Milk Producers Federation has proposed five changes to the federal milk marketing order system. In a letter to the head of USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, the group asked for a federal hearing to consider their proposal and begin the process for making changes to the system.

Federal milk marketing orders were first created in the 1930s in order to establish a minimum price for milk and stabilize the market for the perishable product. It’s a long-running industry joke that most people don’t understand the details of how milk gets priced. Many regulations used today were created during a reform of the system in 2000.

Jeff Lyon is general manager of FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative, a Madison-based farmer group that is part of the National Milk Producers Federation. He said the group was prompted to look at updating the system during the COVID-19 pandemic. Changes to consumer eating and demand for certain dairy products revealed weaknesses in the way milk is priced.

“It caused great distress and lost money for farmers,” Lyon said. “People wanted to try to do an emergency hearing. USDA decided not to do it, but it got people thinking that we do need to do some things and look at the federal orders.”

The federation’s proposals include changing the price formula for beverage milk back to the version that was in place prior to the 2018 Farm Bill, a change supported by the Wisconsin Farm Bureau and other organizations. It also includes updating the standard for milk components like protein and nonfat solids. The change is meant to better reflect today’s quality of milk due to improved genetics and better feed practices.

Chuck Nicholson, ag economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said these more technical updates are needed because the industry has changed since the last rewrite of the formulas. He said some of the biggest changes in the last two decades have been around manufacturers’ costs for turning raw milk into the products on store shelves.

Milk price formulas work backwards by taking the value of finished dairy products and subtracting the cost of processing, called a “make allowance,” in order to get the price of milk that plants have to pay farms. Nicholson said these allowances haven’t been updated since 2008.

“A lot of things obviously have changed in 15 years, including a lot of cost increases particularly for things like labor and for utilities,” he said. “So it has become harder and harder to use that old value to accurately represent what it takes to transform a pound of farm milk into a certain amount of cheese.”

Nicholson says this tension is one of the key drivers for why the National Milk Producers Federation and other industry groups are pushing to update the system.

The group’s proposal calls for increasing make allowances for butter, nonfat dry milk, cheese and dry whey to between 21 and 24 cents per pound, an increase of 3 or 4 cents for each product.

In their letter, the federation says inadequate allowances “challenge manufacturing operations’ abilities to pay minimum announced milk prices and still operate their facilities at reasonable rates of return.” But the group also acknowledged that increasing these allowances will mean lower milk prices for farmers. They estimated a decline of 54 cents per hundredweight, which is about 3 percent of the national all-milk price paid in March.

“Going forward, competitive market forces of supply and demand will affect dairy product prices to mitigate this initial impact on producers and manufacturers by reducing milk production and thereby returning milk prices received by dairy farmers to levels close to what they would receive in the absence of the proposed change,” the federation’s letter said.

Some farmer advocates have pushed back on increasing make allowances and pointed out that the milk price system does not account for the production costs of farmers, which have also increased substantially in recent years.

When talking about possible changes to dairy pricing in the next federal farm bill, Wisconsin Farmers Union president Darin Von Ruden said last month that the current pricing system can lead to the average farmer getting paid less for their milk than what it costs to produce it.

“Most farmers feel that if the processing industry gets those make allowances, then farmers should also be able to receive a cost of production part in the formula,” Von Ruden said, calling for a larger rewrite of the way milk is priced.

Nicholson said he’s heard these criticisms too, but he thinks it’s too simplistic to say that make allowances only help processing companies, especially because farmer-run cooperatives represent a fair amount of milk processing in the United States.

Both Nicholson and Lyon agree that the increase to make allowances would have one of the biggest impacts on milk prices in Wisconsin because so much of the state’s milk goes into cheese production.

The other big impact for the state’s farmers would be an increase to the premiums paid for beverage milk based on location, called a “differential.” The differential is meant to make up for the increased cost of trucking milk to areas where there is less production, but the federation says the cost of milk hauling has tripled since the premiums were set in 2000. The proposed price increases are larger in areas where there is less milk production, like the southeastern U.S., but Nicholson said the $1 increase in Wisconsin would still have a positive impact on some farms.

As a whole, Lyon said the combination of changes proposed by National Milk Producers Federation are meant to help the dairy industry over the long term.

“Will it help specific farmers? That’s hard to say, because people enter or exit the business for lots of different reasons,” he said.

Nicholson said the federation’s proposal likely won’t be enough to completely change the landscape for dairy profitability.

“We’re going to continue to see that some farms will have some challenges, but it’s going to make for a better situation for them than it would otherwise,” he said.

But he said it’s ultimately up to the USDA whether they want to consider any of the proposed changes in a future hearing.

According to Statistics New Zealand (NZ Stats), the equivalent of Ireland’s Central Statistics Office (CSO), the number of dairy cows and heifers in calf or milk in New Zealand has decreased by 6.3% over the previous five years.

There were 4.72 million such dairy animals in New Zealand as of June 2022, up from 5.04 million in 2017. The most recent NZ Stats numbers, released this week, show a continuous reduction of dairy cows and heifers over the last five years.

The North Island of New Zealand saw the greatest drop, with about 12% fewer dairy cows and heifers in 2022 than in 2017. The South Island, on the other hand, witnessed a 2.3% gain in population.
Calves

There were 10% fewer calves born alive to dairy heifers and cows in 2022 than there were in 2017. This might be a sign of continuing decrease in New Zealand’s dairy herd.

The number of dairy calves on the ground fell from 4.63 million in 2017 to 4.17 million last year.

Dairy calf numbers have declined dramatically in the country’s North Island yet again, with those born alive falling almost 13% from 2.80 million in 2017 to 2.45 million in June 2022.

As of June 2022, the total number of dairy cattle, including bulls and heifers still to be bred, was 6.14 million, a 6% decrease from the 6.53 million observed in 2017. Both results are lower below the highest number of such animals, which was about 6.7 million in 2014.

Dairy cow numbers in New Zealand are at their lowest since 2011, according to NZ Stats study.

data New Zealand is the New Zealand government agency in responsibility of compiling data on the country’s economy, population, and society.

It had a final total response rate of 73% for its agricultural production census 2022. This was a lower response rate than the 2017 census, which had an 84% response rate.

According to the department’s data analysis, the reduced response rate had no substantial influence on the quality of the statistics generated.

A new factory in Constantine will produce ethanol from a dairy byproduct.

Dairy Distillery, a Canadian enterprise, will grow in Constantine in collaboration with the Michigan Milk Producers Association. The plant would be built on the same site as MMPA’s Constantine facility, which is situated on Depot Street near Water Street.

According to Omid McDonald, the creator of Dairy Distillery, the factory will employ milk permeate, a byproduct that is basically sugar water extracted from skim milk during dairy processing. The milk permeate is fermented, converted into ethanol, and then distilled.

After collaborating with the University of Ottawa to find out how to ferment the residue, Dairy Distillery began utilising milk permeate to manufacture vodka called Vodkow in 2018. During the epidemic, it began producing hand sanitizer for its local hospitals and community, according to McDonald.

The company then began exploring for alternative applications for milk permeate.

“Very early on, we realised that this problem with excess milk permeate is a problem for the dairy industry as a whole,” McDonald said. “Because there’s only so much vodka people can drink and so much of this stuff out there, we asked ourselves, ‘Well, what other high-volume uses are out there?’ That’s when we started looking at biofuel.”

About two and a half years ago, the firm met with the MMPA. Its Constantine site was producing a large amount of milk permeate and distributing it to pigs. It was seeking for a better strategy to lessen its environmental impact.

“A lot of people are critical of dairy because of its environmental impact, and we want to be a part of… the story to show that with innovation and technology, we can eliminate that impact and so people can enjoy the dairy products they love knowing that the environmental impact is minimised,” McDonald said.

The milk permeate will be routed from the dairy plant to the ethanol plant. The ethanol will subsequently be utilised in the production of gasoline.

“When this ethanol is blended with transportation fuel, what it does is it displaces oil,” McDonald said. “As a result, it keeps oil in the ground and replaces it with ethanol made from reclaimed carbon.” This provides a ‘carbon offset,’ and this ethanol will displace about 14,000 (metric) tonnes of carbon each year.”

He estimates that this accounts for around 5% of the facility’s carbon impact.

For the project, the business picked Michigan over Indiana. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation granted a request for incentives on Tuesday, including a $2 million performance-based award and a $682,500 State Essential Services Assessment exemption for 15 years. Constantine is anticipated to provide a property tax exemption.

According to McDonald, the Inflation Reduction Act also provides incentives.

“The new Inflation Reduction Act has support for green projects that are just… a magnitude larger than what we have here in Canada,” he remarked.

Dairy Distillery is now located in Almonte, Ontario. The Constantine facility will be its first in the United States.

The project is planned to bring 12 employment to the region and a $41.1 million capital expenditure. The production will begin in 2025.

The dairy checkoff is bringing a new approach to building trust with young Americans by helping high school curriculum writers across the country incorporate accurate science behind dairy farming.

The “On The Farm STEM” (science, technology, engineering and math) experience is co-funded by National Dairy Council and Midwest Dairy, and it is bringing leading science educators and curriculum directors to dairy farms to discover ideas that can fit into high school curriculum. Ultimately, the program – created in partnership with the American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture – will offer a science-based counterbalance to misunderstanding about how dairy is responsibly produced by farmers and its contributions to health and wellness.

The curriculum is expected to be implemented in several states by early 2024.

The on-farm immersion experiences began last year when Midwest Dairy arranged for educators from 15 states and Puerto Rico to visit dairy farms and other industry entities in Minnesota to see firsthand how farmers use many STEM-aligned aspects to care for the environment and their cows.

More recently, the Dairy Council of Florida hosted nearly 30 STEM thought leaders and curriculum directors from across the state to three dairy farms. Similar dairy visits are being arranged by the Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council, Dairy Farmers of Washington and United Dairy Industry of Michigan for this summer.

Greg Watts of Full Circle Dairy in Florida was among the farmers who hosted a visit and said STEM curriculum featuring dairy is critical for teachers and students who are generations removed from farming.

“The connection back to ag and dairy is so important in today’s world where there is so much misinformation out there,” Watts said. “It’s nice for us to offer our perspective to show what we’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis to care for the environment and our cows. We’re sharing it with somebody who may teach this to students and that gives us hope and encouragement for the future generation. To me, this is mission critical.”

On The Farm STEM has its beginnings in the beef checkoff after ranchers sought a positive and proactive measure to anti-animal agriculture groups sending information to schools. Daniel Meloy, executive director of American Farm Bureau Foundation for Agriculture, said the beef program has been successful and led to a similar collaboration with the dairy checkoff.

“It has been a terrific opportunity and already has had a significant impact,” Meloy said. “The best part is when I hear from teachers who say they have students who are suddenly seeing ag careers in a different light. They may have had an image of overalls and digging in the dirt, but the students are now applying to colleges to pursue an agricultural career. The kids are getting excited about agriculture because the program makes it relevant. Everyone eats, so it makes it very real for them.”

Some dairy-focused classroom materials already are being used in school pilot programs. National Dairy Council and Midwest Dairy are creating an implementation handbook that other state and regional checkoff organizations can customize based on the characteristics of their local needs.

The checkoff is building relationships with key education organizations such as the National Science Teaching Association and respected curriculum reviewers to bring awareness to the STEM content.

Heather Ihde, an educator from Nashville, Tennessee, was among the teachers who participated in the dairy farm tours in Minnesota. She saw much potential for dairy-focused curriculum following her farm visit.

“The sustainability message that runs through all the experiences is going to be incredible for all classrooms,” Ihde said. “I had never been on a farm before, and it was really eye-opening to see the technology and the relevance to my students’ lives. I want to find local farms and see how we can replicate experiences like this for our teachers and our students and help them bring more ag science into the classroom.”

To learn more about the dairy checkoff, visit www.usdairy.com.

A record snowpack that’s far from fully melted, combined with last winter’s record rains, may mean it will be some time before Cory Vanderham, owner of Vanderham West Dairy in Corcoran, CA, will get his 4,500 cows all back to his farm.

In the meantime, he’s relying on leases in other locations, help from friends, and faith, to get through an ongoing disruption to the dairy industry in the nation’s top milk-producing state that creates new challenges every day. 

“You don’t realize how strong this community is and how strong ag is until things get wild like this,” said Vanderham, a member of NMPF’s Board of Directors and the California Dairies Inc. cooperative, said in a Dairy Defined podcast released today. “And when it got wild, everybody showed up to help.”

Vanderham also discusses his on-the-ground observations on what kind of policy changes and investments at all levels of government could improve the state’s water management and infrastructure as farmers look toward a more resilient future in the face of weather extremes. The full podcast is here. You can also find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Google Podcasts. Broadcast outlets may use the MP3 file below. Please attribute information to NMPF.

German and French dairy cows account for more than one-third of all dairy cows in the European Union. According to EuroStat estimates, they had more than 7 million cows between them in 2022, out of a total of 20.1 million.

Germany had the highest dairy cow population in the EU, with 3.8 million cows, accounting for 17% of the overall EU dairy population (excluding the UK). France had 3.2 million animals, while Poland had the third-largest national herd, with little more than 2 million.

In 2022, the majority of EU nations had an annual fall in cow numbers, with France seeing the greatest loss, with 91,720 (2.7%) fewer animals than the previous year.

Austria, which saw the most growth inside the EU last year, defied the trend. The population reached 551,000 people, an increase of 24,090 (4.6%) from 2021.

Malta, on the other hand, remained the EU’s lowest milk-producing country, with just 6,120 documented in 2022.

According to Defra estimates, the UK, which had the third-largest herd in the EU before Brexit, had 2.65 million head, a 1,000-head decrease. The milking herd totaled 1.86 million head in December, a small rise over the same time in 2021.

This year, cow numbers are anticipated to plummet much lower. The European Commission anticipated a 0.2% reduction in milk output for 2023 in its short-term dairy outlook. Due to a shrinking dairy herd and a predicted 1% rise in slaughtering, there will be less milk available in 203.

According to Tom Price, an expert at the UK’s Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, the second half of the year might see significant declines in output owing to falling milk prices. This might be countered by increased harvests if the hot and dry weather of last summer does not reoccur.

Several nations’ scientists have made progress in developing cattle cloning technology in the last year. The first cloned cows are now producing milk, which is still being trialled and tested. However, the near future of these technologies is uncertain, since the public’s willingness to consume milk from cloned cows is in doubt.

Early in February 2023, Chinese official media stated that a group of Chinese scientists had successfully cloned three super-cows capable of producing an astounding quantity of milk. The three calves born in the Ningxia area in December and January are exact replicas of extremely prolific Holstein Friesian cows capable of producing 18 tonnes of milk each year, or 100 tonnes of milk during their lifespan.
China has cloned cows.

According to Jin Yaping, one of the key experts, the creation of the super-cows was a breakthrough that allowed China to keep the greatest cows in an economically possible method. He also expressed optimism that cloning technology would assist China in reducing its reliance on foreign breeds.

If cloning technology spreads in China, it will significantly alter the breeding section of the global dairy business. Currently, China imports around 70% of breeding cattle, with a significant portion coming from the EU.

According to Chinese experts, just 5 cows in 10,000 can produce 100 tonnes of milk throughout their lifetime. Highly prolific cows are often recognised towards the end of their lives when standard reproduction procedures are no longer viable.

China wants to generate 1,000 highly prolific clones over the next 2-3 years, which, according to Yaping, will serve as the backbone of a revitalised Chinese dairy sector.
Genetically engineered organisms

China is not the only market where cloning technologies hold great promise. Russia’s first cloned cow gave birth to a healthy calf towards the end of 2022. While Chinese scientists are solely cloning high-productive animals, Russian scientists have begun cloning animals with conventional cow genes tweaked to improve specific features.

Cloning a cow is effectively a trial run for making a gene-edited animal, according to Petr Sergiev, one of the study’s authors, since scientists need to ensure that all of their techniques are in order before implanting the modified embryos. The researchers had previously utilised CRISPR/Cas technology to knock out PAEP and LOC100848610, two genes in the bovine genome that represent beta-lactoglobulin, and generate a line of genetically modified embryonic fibroblasts.

The goal was to produce milk hypoallergenic, but this method may provide much more. The scientists said that gene editing technique might have a wide range of applications, such as increasing yields or making animals more susceptible to heat stress. It is also critical to ensure that the cow can produce healthy progeny. The gene-editing technologies provide dairy producers with practically limitless alternatives for what and how they produce.

“I believe that this work will lay the methodological groundwork for gene editing cattle in Russia, leading to more complex challenges.” For example, we may induce cows to create proteins that they would not ordinarily produce for biotechnological objectives,” he concludes.

Cloned cows, like those used in China, might be useful to the Russian dairy sector, which is looking to reduce its reliance on imports from Western nations as sanctions threaten to disrupt supply.
The Frankenfood Myth

However, there are serious concerns that milk from cloned cows will be available on grocery store shelves in the near future.

“Consumer fears about genetic engineering have been stoked,” said Dr. Bjoern Boergermann, executive director of the German Dairy Industry Association.

European consumers have been hesitant to adopt genetically modified creatures in recent years. The German food retail industry advocated the designation Ohne Gentechnik, or GMO-free, in 2015/2016. Dairies have met the retailer’s demand, and now, over 70% of milk in Germany is produced in this manner.

“The VLOG association establishes the standard and certifies the businesses.” It states that GMO-free is critical for consumers. “These statements are always found in varying forms in consumer surveys, depending on who is asking and how,” Dr. Boergermann stated, emphasising that this is mostly concerning GMO feed.

It is difficult to anticipate how broadly cloning technology would be approved in Russia and China. Several public opinion surveys in Russia demonstrate that 66% of consumers feel GMOs are harmful to their health.

The Chinese government does not believe that people will trust genetically engineered crops. The government initiated a media effort in 2014 to improve public opinion of GMOs, but it had little to no impact. According to a recent study, 46.7% of respondents were opposed to GMOs, with 14% claiming it was a sort of bioterrorism directed towards China.

The European Commission is likely to rule in 2023 on whether items derived from CRISPR/Cas should be subject to GMO laws. So far, this has mostly concerned grain, but given recent advances in cloning farmed animals, the decision might have significant implications for the cattle sector as well. Even if politicians agree, it remains to be seen if public opinion would welcome gene-editing technology.

“In the recent past, NGOs have played out the CRISPR/Cas problem extensively in public. This will happen again when the EU nears a conclusion,” Boergermann said.

Following prosecution by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI), Daniel Kilsby-Halliday, 40, was convicted in Levin District Court on five offences under the Animal Welfare Act.

Kilsby-Halliday was also sentenced to pay $7,161.20 in veterinary and related fees by the court.

MPI reacted to an allegation of at least ten dead cattle found in an area of Kilsby-Halliday’s property in August 2021.

An animal welfare inspector discovered 29 dead cattle on the ranch, which a veterinarian said would have perished from malnutrition and illness over the period of three weeks.

Before MPI came to inspect all livestock, the farmer euthanized two more cattle.

Before MPI arrived, 59 additional cattle were transferred to neighbouring paddocks with moderate grass cover. Of them, 27 were deemed to be so thin that immediate treatment was required to improve their health.

According to Grey Harrison, MPI’s national manager of animal welfare and National Animal Identification & Tracing (NAIT) compliance, the cattle would have been in significant suffering due to a lack of food.

“Some were also afflicted by parasites, and some would have died where they collapsed because they were too weak to get up off the ground,” he explains.

“The cattle were about 200 metres from the farmer’s house, and their gradual deterioration should have been detected through regular animal checks.” People in charge of animals are always responsible for their well-being, including giving enough food and prompt veterinary treatment. Mr Kilsby-Halliday fell short of these expectations.”

“Mr Kilsby-Halliday is a seasoned farmer who understood his responsibilities to his animals.” Most farmers do the proper thing for their animals, routinely checking on them and acting if they see changes in their health, but he didn’t. “If we discover evidence of neglect or cruelty, we will investigate and bring the case to court,” Harrison said.

The MPI strongly urges any member of the public who witnesses animal abuse or ill-treatment to report it to the MPI animal welfare complaints hotline at 0800 00 83 33.

Maureen DeBruin, a long-time Holstein classifier, is retiring from HAUSA. After 38 years of service, HAUSA recognised her on social media as a real pioneer in the dairy sector, having classed over 1.1 million cows and being one of the first female classifiers in the profession. Her passion and experience have assisted numerous farmers in improving their herds and reaching their objectives. Maureen has broken down several barriers and paved the path for other female dairy workers. HAUSA is appreciative for her tireless efforts and steadfast dedication, and they wish her the best in her future chapter. Maureen, congratulations on your retirement!

The Consortium for Common Food Names (CCFN), U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) and National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) expressed their appreciation today for the U.S. Trade Representative’s (USTR) prioritization of the protection of common names in this year’s Special 301 Report. The organizations urged USTR to swiftly move forward with more assertive steps to preserve export access for food producers relying on common food and beverage terms.

Published annually, the report outlines global challenges related to intellectual property, which includes continued and escalating efforts from the European Union to abuse and misuse geographical indications (GI) to confiscate generic terms – such as “parmesan” or “bologna” – for its own producers.  This year’s report reflects several of the main areas of concern that CCFN detailed in comments submitted in January, with support from NMPF and USDEC.

“As USTR’s report clearly lays out, the EU’s aggressive common name confiscation campaign presents a significant threat to producers and exporters in the U.S. and elsewhere,” said Jaime Castaneda, executive director of CCFN. “Looking forward, it’s urgent that the Administration use its full suite of tools to protect the market access rights of producers using common food and beverage names.”

Restricting the right of producers to use common names is far more than just a labeling issue – it strips companies of the right to market products using the names that consumers know and love, takes products off shelves, and hurts workers up and down the supply chain.

“For far too long, the EU has abused GIs to erect trade barriers that prevent U.S. dairy from competing on a more level global playing field,” commented Jim Mulhern, president and CEO of NMPF. “The U.S. government has ample opportunities – including through existing bilateral trade engagement forums and upcoming trade negotiations – to fight back. We’ll be urging and supporting those efforts on behalf of American dairy farmers.”

“The U.S. dairy industry relies on exports to succeed, so when foreign government ban or restrict the use of common cheese names, it impacts companies, family farms, workers and the industry at large,” explained Krysta Harden, president and CEO of USDEC. “American-made dairy can compete with any products in the world. We thank USTR for acknowledging what a sizable problem this is for American producers and call on the Administration to stand up to unfair trade barriers so that our industry can go toe to toe with global competitors.”

According to a USDA analysis, around 6% of U.S. dairy farms would stop milking cows in 2022, albeit at a slower pace than in the previous five years.

There were 70,375 dairy herds in the nation 20 years ago. There were 27,932 herds in 2022, down from 29,842 in 2021. The calendar year 2022 witnessed the withdrawal of 1,910 dairy herds throughout the country, accounting for about 6% of the country’s dairy businesses.

This compared to a national loss of 1,794 herds, or 5.7 percent of the total, in 2021. However, the drop was greater in the prior three years. During the last two decades, the United States has lost an average of 2,300 dairy herds every year.

Meanwhile, the number of dairy cows has decreased marginally. The average herd size is increasing, as is per-cow and total milk output. In 2022, the average dairy herd size hit a new high of 337 head.

“Consumer optimism is low. Didur stated that exports have nearly ceased, attributing this, among other things, to errors made by the Ukrainian government in bilateral customs relations with the Central Asian nations of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Among other factors that have a significant impact on the Ukrainian dairy industry, he cited the high cost of raw materials relative to the European Union, the absence of government support, and the difficulty of obtaining bank loans.

In addition, Ukrainian dairy manufacturers face payment delays from retail chains. Didur warned that a proposed increase in energy prices by the government could be the “last straw” that leads to widespread bankruptcy in the sector.

Help is on the way

In the meantime, the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, has recently introduced new legislation to alleviate tensions in the troubled dairy industry. One proposal would reduce the VAT on dairy products from 20% to 10%. If adopted, this measure would apply to both domestic and imported products.
The agrarian policy minister, Nikolai Solsky, stated that the new legislation should aid legal businesses in their fight against the shadow sector. When the measure is enacted into law, he is confident that dairy producers who do not pay taxes will forfeit a portion of their profits.

Self-regulation is being considered.

In addition, the Ukrainian government intends to implement a commodity checkoff programme.
In accordance with a proposed law, market participants will be required to contribute 0.5% of their revenue to a specially established fund intended “to promote dairy products, advance innovation, combat fraud, and develop new production standards.”

“This will allow the state to transfer a portion of the functions that industry representatives will handle better than anyone else,” Solsky explained, adding that this plan is comparable to the one adopted in the United States. On the other hand, he vowed that it would be implemented only if Ukrainian dairy farmers expressed interest.

The last five years have been difficult for dairy farmers, with many bearing the burden of rising input prices.

The last five years have been difficult for dairy farmers, with many bearing the burden of rising input prices. The COVID-19 epidemic and changing federal milk pricing rules are two of the most significant financial challenges affecting dairies.

According to Danny Munch, an economist with the American Farm Bureau Federation, dairy farmers are struggling merely to break even.

“So, according to the ERS–economic research statistics, dairy farmers lose over $6 per hundredweight on average, putting in about $27 a hundredweight and only receiving $21 a hundredweight on average.” “For small farms with fewer than 50 cows, that adds up to a loss of more than $20 per hundredweight,” he says.

Brad Heins, University of Minnesota Extension Dairy Specialist, has seen dairies diversify in order to boost profitability and overcome financial difficulties, such as adding dairy-beef production or on-farm processing.

“We’ve seen year over year increases in feed prices, whether it’s corn, commodities or lucerne, and it’s really affecting the bottom lines of dairy farms.” Milk prices have risen in several areas during the previous five years. But it’s softening again, so it’s really that feed milk balance on a daily farm trying to make it work economically,” he said.

The AFBG is assisting dairy producers with federal milk price reform.

Genetic progress in cattle breeding has been a significant focus for the global agricultural industry over the past several decades. The use of advanced genetic tools and technologies has allowed for the development of more efficient and productive cattle breeds, which has resulted in increased milk and meat production, as well as improved animal health and welfare.

Several countries have made significant strides in cattle breeding and genetic progress. In the United States, for example, the dairy industry has seen an average increase of 1.5% per year in milk production per cow since the 1970s. In Europe, countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, and France have implemented advanced breeding programs and technologies to improve the genetic potential of their cattle populations.

In developing countries, the focus has been on developing and improving indigenous cattle breeds through selective breeding and genetic improvement programs. For example, Brazil has developed several successful breeding programs for its native cattle breeds, resulting in increased productivity and improved meat and milk quality.

Gene editing has led to several current and forthcoming advancements in cow genetics. Breeding programmes may use gene editing to rapidly and precisely introduce desired modifications, which is impossible with traditional selection alone.

Gene editing, as explained by Dr. Alison van Eenennaam, entails directing enzymatic DNA’scissors’ to make a precise cut at a specified DNA sequence. Using gene editing, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, produced a bull calf (called Cosmo) with the potential to have progeny that are mostly male.

She elaborates, “You can have inactivation of the gene that is located at the target site, or an alteration in the functionality of that gene, depending on how the cut is repaired.” DNA from the same organism, a different organism of the same species, or a DNA repair template from a different species might be injected at the cut spot.

Mendelian or qualitative qualities, which are controlled by a single gene rather than a large number of genes like quantitative features, are ideal candidates for gene editing.

On the other hand, genetic engineering has been around for more than two decades, and it involves inserting foreign genetic material into the genome with the use of a DNA repair template and without the need of site-directed nucleases. In 2020, the first genetically-engineered (transgenic) farmed animals authorised for human consumption in the United States were the ‘GalSafe’ pigs (originally conceived in 2002) and the ‘AquAdvantage’ fish (originally created in 1989).

Heat Tollerance
Gene editing has only been employed in two methods so far, both of which are related to specific genes that govern features linked with heat tolerance (coat colour and hair type), despite the fact that heat tolerance is an overall performance criterion with many contributing qualities (and thus many genes).

The so-called’slick coat’ is the result of a single gene change. These cattle benefit from the heat less than their hairless counterparts since their hair is short, smooth, and occasionally shiny. This characteristic has been shown to reduce the vaginal temperature and the respiratory rate in Holsteins. The reproductive performance of slick-coated Holsteins was also shown to be enhanced in the hot and humid circumstances of Puerto Rico, according to a report published in 2020 by researchers from Mississippi State University and the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez.

Geneticists at the Roslin Institute (University of Edinburgh in Scotland) have utilised a gene-editing technology to introduce the’slick gene’ into freshly fertilised eggs from cows without the edit, despite the fact that the’slick gene’ is also employed in traditional breeding plans in other areas of the globe. Native Kenyan cow breeds are a focus of their collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute in that country.

Two slick-coated beef calves were created via gene editing by a company in the United States called Recombinetics. Data on “significant” gains in performance of these altered beef cattle under heat stress has been collected, according to Dr. Tad Sonstegard, president and CEO of Acceligen (owned by Recombinetics), but it is not yet suitable for publishing.

Lightening the coat colour of cattle (dark hues absorb more UV) is another method of using gene editing to lessen the effects of heat stress. New Zealand geneticists have succeeded in changing the traditional black-and-white Holstein coat pattern to a more modern grey-and-white one.

Dr. Peter J. Hansen of the University of Florida mentions the identification of a heat-tolerance gene in cattle, which is associated with reduced synthesis of heat shock proteins and correspondingly reduced cell death, in a review article regarding the possibilities of gene editing.

The Australian research group Agriculture Victoria has also discovered numerous genes that are highly linked to heat tolerance. Since 2017, breeders in Australia have had access to genomic breeding parameters for heat tolerance that are grounded on natural genetic variation.

Medical advancements
Disease resistance, say specialists like Van Eenennaam, is where gene editing may have the most impact. This is due to the fact that traditional breeding has already substantially improved (some would argue to near maximum) qualities like growth rate and feed conversion in cattle, and that these traits are impacted by a large number of genes.

Despite the complexity of most disease processes, gene editing has been shown to prevent or significantly decrease disease vulnerability in certain circumstances. Deleting a gene that codes for a host cell surface protein that a specific pathogen uses as an attachment site is one such strategy. This precise idea, in relation to the attachment of the virus causing Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS), has been realised in pigs.
Researchers at Recombinetics, in conjunction with two US institutions and the USDA, have created a gene-edited cow that is resistant to Bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV). To paraphrase the researchers, “dramatically reduced susceptibility to infection, as measured by clinical signs and the lack of viral infection in white blood cells” is the outcome of a gene edit replacement in the BVDV ‘binding domain’ gene on 1 chromosome.

The smooth coat mutation and two targeted mutations in potential genes for African trypanosomiasis resistance have been used in the recombinetic production of ‘Thamani’ Holsteins. “We have bred a small herd of Holstein animals with multiple edits that are still in the pre-regulatory evaluation phase of development,” explains Sonstegard. Since small-holder dairy farms in tropical countries were the intended beneficiaries of this breeding endeavour, such farms will be the first to get permission.

The gene edit for the cow illness is being worked on by one of Van Eenennaam’s graduate students. She explains that, “since the disease affects both sheep and humans, he is knocking out the gene in sheep first; if that works, we’ll try out the edit in cattle, which are more expensive models on which to perform experiments.”

Van Eenennaam explains that China has released papers demonstrating their attempts to breed resistant cattle to TB, a zoonotic disease with worldwide significance.

It cost me money to raise the bull and harvest his sperm, but I don’t have enough money right now to find out whether he has an unbalanced effect on the gender ratio of his progeny. According to Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam, depicted above, “it is very expensive to undertake this type of research in the United States.” Dr. Alison Van Eenennaam, shown.

Changes in many parts of the globe
As Van Eenennaam says, “I had initial funding to produce the bull and collect his semen, but as yet I don’t have funding to confirm if the gender ratio is skewed in his resulting offspring.” This is in reference to Cosmo, the gene-edited calf that Van Eenennaam produced. Since all gene-edited animals are deemed novel animal medicines by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), doing this sort of study in the United States is prohibitively costly. This makes it difficult to acquire the substantial funds necessary for such research, since the resulting waste must be burnt rather than sold.

To create sterile bulls and cows into which elite germ lines from unrelated, genetically superior animals may be inserted, one of her graduate students has been attempting to knock off a gene for germline development in cattle. According to her, this technology has the potential to speed up the spread of top genetics in large-scale businesses like beef and sheep production by means of natural service mating.

Several years ago, a group of researchers from several universities and Recombinetics successfully edited the genes of polled (hornless) cattle. According to Van Eenennaam’s 2019 review study, there is a lot of interest in using editing to introduce the polled allele into dairy breeds despite the fact that dehorning is unpleasant but protects animals and people from damage. Due to the lack of genetic value and the rarity of polled dairy sires, polled cow breeding has not been a priority in the past.

Scientists from New Zealand and Recombinetics utilised zygote-mediated genome editing to remove beta-lactoglobulin, a significant allergy in cow’s milk. This was done by some of the same scientists that edited the gene for the grey Holstein coat.
Republic of Korea researchers have created double-muscled cows by manipulating the myostatin gene. According to Van Eenennaam, this has also been accomplished in swine, cattle, and sheep by Chinese researchers. Similarly, Japanese researchers have created myostatin knockouts in 2 fish species, making them the world’s first gene-edited animal food product accessible for commercial sale.
Static regulatory regimes
Many geneticists, like Van Eenennaam, find current laws on gene editing to be too rigid and irrational. In the European Union, for instance, gene editing is subject to the same regulations as genetic engineering. When a gene is knocked out and no unique or foreign DNA is added, the leadership in other countries sees gene editing as similar to traditional breeding. This is the case in Brazil, Australia, and Argentina.

It’s fair to say that US laws and rules are unusual. Currently, the Food and medicine Administration (FDA) oversees livestock gene editing, considering any purposeful genome modification to be the same as a novel animal medicine subject to the same regulatory frameworks.

A first of its kind ‘enforcement discretion judgement’ on gene-edited livestock was issued to Recombinetics in March 2022 over their two beef calves with the slick coat mutation. Since the ‘risk’ connected with these calves and their gene edit was deemed negligible, current new animal rules do not apply to them or their offspring. According to Van Eenennaam, this does not mean that new animal medicine rules have been approved or waived; rather, it means that the products derived from these two animals were not deemed dangerous enough to need special attention from regulators.

In order to meet the goals of Executive Order 14081, “Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe, and Secure American Bioeconomy,” she recommends that the FDA consider a tiered system of regulatory oversight based on levels of risk and that an update to the regulatory framework be undertaken as soon as possible.

There are “huge opportunity costs” to putting off genetic progress in our food animal species, she warns. It’s been said that “the lack of global regulatory harmonisation around gene-edited animals and products from these animals, including semen and embryos, will pose challenges regarding global trade, and aspects of traceability in both animal breeding and the food chain.”

In the future, as she explains in a recent paper co-authored with PhD candidate Maci L. Mueller, Van Eenennaam thinks gene editing will need to be seamlessly integrated into structured breeding programmes with a clear breeding objective, and will ideally be used to accelerate genetic gain by using it in conjunction with assisted-breeding technologies to simultaneously alter multiple components of the breeder’s selection process.

Many models of gene-editing strategies have been developed for cattle populations, with the most successful strategies depending critically on broad acceptance of assisted reproductive technologies, particularly the use of artificial insemination in the commercial sector.

Artificial insemination with semen from elite, edited males is a simple way to spread desirable edits across dairy cow production systems. For example, Van Eenennaam says, “considering the currently limited adoption of artificial insemination in developing countries, and especially in extensive livestock production systems, novel breeding schemes, such as gene editing applied to produce surrogate sires carrying elite germline genetics, will likely be required to widely disseminate desired traits improved via edits.”

The dairy markets have seen many highs and lows lately, but customers are still buying, and dairy experts predict that margins will improve.

“Wasn’t 2022 a year of extremes?” We had record-high milk prices, but it also meant record-high feed costs. So, although the money coming in was high, whether the expenses were going back out properly, the margins were still fairly solid, comparatively speaking, all across the board. That was sort of great for dairy. “That gave producers a bit of a reprieve to catch up on some things, maybe make some new investments that we’re seeing out there, and also maybe give a little cushion,” Leonard Polzin said.

Polzin believes that crucial policy choices must be taken as the dairy industry in the United States looks to the future.

“Right now, one of the top areas of discussion, of course, is federal milk marketing orders, because as we look at not only the Farm Bill coming up, but potentially a federal milk marketing order hearing within the next, say, 12 months or less, we’re looking at making some of those changes to reflect maybe the needs or desires or different changes in the marketplace within the industry, all the way from the farm, through processing, to the retail side.” So there has been a lot of effort done by many people at the institution to look at that. As a result, when these policymakers and decision makers all get around the table, they will have all of the information they need to make the most educated choice possible. As a result, all participants in the marketplace will have an impartial source to turn to.”

Robot milkers are becoming increasingly popular across Canada. Robot technology is now used to milk cows on 15 to 20% of Canadian farms. Ten years ago, that figure was closer to 5%. Western Canadian dairy farmers are the most enthusiastic adopters, with between 25% and 50% of farms in various provinces using robots to milk cows. Around 20% of farms in Ontario and Quebec, where the majority of dairies are located, use robot milkers.

What is driving the rapid adoption of robots in the Canadian dairy industry? According to Dr. Trevor DeVries, who leads dairy robot research at the University of Guelph, the ability of automation to replace human labour is at the top of the list of benefits.

Listen to Real Agricultures interview with Dr Trevor DeVries

According to several recent dairy industry publications, Texas is on its way to becoming the third-largest dairy state. Texas’ milk production increased by 5.9% last year, outpacing all other top ten dairy states. With nearly 6% annual growth for several years, it has been difficult to sell all of this additional fluid milk into an already crowded market, but it may be the key to the Texas dairy industry’s future success.
Texas has 9% of the country’s population, and more people are moving there every year. According to Hoard’s Dairyman, Texas is a net importer of dairy products. Texas produced an astounding 550 pounds of dairy products per person, but this is insufficient to achieve the 600 pounds per person required to make our state a net dairy product exporter. However, more and more people want to become Texans every day, which will continue to drive dairy consumption, which will drive production.

It’s a far cry from the situation in Idaho, which we’re about to pass to become the third-largest dairy-producing state. Idaho is the nation’s leading exporter of dairy products, but its population is only 1.9 million (less than the three largest cities in Texas) compared to our 30 million, limiting future market expansions.

With the upcoming processing plant openings, I am confident that Texas will continue to expand its production and become a net exporter in the coming years. Texas will continue to capitalise on its proximity to Mexico, the leading export market for American dairy. This expanding market will be critical to the expansion of Texas milk production.

It was surprising that California, the leading dairy-producing state, reduced production last year. Production increased in the following four states, Wisconsin, Idaho, Texas, and New York, but decreased in the next five, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Washington. Our neighbour New Mexico experienced the greatest drop, falling 8.4%. Texas’ rising milk production will compensate for some of that loss.

The continued consolidation of the dairy industry across the country allows some states to increase production while other states’ markets contract. States with processing plants and exporting dairy products will see continued growth. This coincides with dairy export sales reaching a new high of 18% of total milk production used for export products. The dairy industry’s continued growth is and will remain linked to increased export sales worldwide.

As you can see, Texas dairy producers are poised to grow alongside our population, our exports to Mexico and elsewhere continue to increase, and other states look to Texas to help fill their dairy product needs. The Texas Association of Dairymen is excited to see our state’s dairy industry grow in the future and to help the industry thrive in Texas.

Growth in core products led to double-digit gains in January.   

U.S. dairy’s positive momentum in the international market continued in 2023 as exports got off to a strong start in January. U.S. shipments climbed 16% year-over-year in volume on a milk solids equivalent (MSE) basis (+25,026 MT MSE) and 21% in value (+$121.4 million) for the month.

The core U.S. product categories – cheese, nonfat dry milk/skim milk powder (NFDM/SMP) and whey – all grew by double digits even as sales of milkfat-heavy products, namely butter, anhydrous milkfat and whole milk powder, struggled.

NFDM/SMP volumes continued to bounce back after being the only major product category to contract in 2022. In January, shipments increased by 15% (+8,805 MT) year-over-year thanks to robust demand from Mexico.

Whey – in all its forms, from permeate and sweet whey to WPC80 and WPI – continued to perform well (+12%, +4,351 MT for low-protein varieties and +14%, +569 MT for WPC80+). U.S. whey success varied by geography: China bought more low-protein varieties, while high-protein varieties found eager buyers in a host of different markets.

Despite rising competition in the cheese space, U.S. exports held strong, increasing 16% (+4,582 MT) thanks to solid growth across the world but particularly in Latin America, Middle East/North Africa and Japan.

Looking ahead, challenges remain with low-priced European cheese on the market, uncertainty from China and economic headwinds. Nonetheless, U.S. dairy exports are off to a running start in 2023.

Visit USDEC’s Data Hub for more detailed information

Mexican demand surges in January

After establishing a new volume record in Mexico in 2022, U.S. dairy suppliers picked up where they left off in January 2023. Year-over-year U.S. dairy export volume to Mexico rose for the fifth straight month, led by NFDM/SMP and cheese.

U.S. NFDM/SMP exports to Mexico soared 75% (+15,625 MT) to 36,520 MT in January. U.S. cheese shipments jumped 21% (+1,578 MT) to 9,159 MT, buoyed by demand for U.S. gouda. Both the NFDM/SMP and cheese totals were easily January records (in fact, before this year, the U.S. never shipped more than 29,000 MT of NFDM/SMP to Mexico in January).

Many other U.S. dairy export categories (while smaller in volume) fared similarly well: Year-over-year U.S. lactose shipments to Mexico rose 52% (+922 MT), milk protein concentrate increased 54% (+524 MT), whey grew 18% (+451 MT), and butter gained 40% (+48 MT).

The source of the gains can be traced to solid Mexican economic growth, a tight domestic milk supply and favorable U.S. milk powder and cheese prices.

On the economic front, the Mexican economy grew for five straight quarters through the end of 2022, lifting consumer demand. In addition, the peso gained value against the U.S. dollar throughout the year (it reached a nearly six-year high this week), helping to make imports more affordable. And a boom in post-COVID tourism in Mexico helped drive cheese consumption.

It’s a positive start to the year for U.S. exports to Mexico, but some factors bear watching in the months ahead. Tailwinds from Mexico’s post-COVID economic reopening are weakening. Mexican growth slowed in the fourth quarter of 2022, and analysts forecast economic expansion this year will come in under 1% (compared to 3.7% in 2022).

WPC80+ exports start off strong

U.S. exports of high-protein whey products excelled in January, continuing to rebound after stagnating for much of 2022. Year-over-year January shipments increased 14% (+569 MT), marking the fourth straight month of growth.

Despite the Q4 surge, U.S. exports of WPC80+ in 2022 were essentially flat (+0.3%, +222 MT), largely attributed to weaker global demand caused in part by higher prices. Global WPC80+ trade contracted by 9% last year. Prices for high-protein whey in early 2022 were more than double those in early 2021, and they stayed elevated through the first three quarters of the year. It wasn’t until Q4 of 2022 that we started to see some meaningful price declines. That prolonged high-price environment burned off demand globally, but the U.S. was able to weather that pullback better than the EU and New Zealand, which saw declines of 17% (-8,268 MT) and 16% (-4,289 MT), respectively, in 2022.

With easing prices and readily available supplies, global demand has started to pick up with the U.S. capitalizing on the opportunity. U.S. exports to China (-39%, -256 MT) continued to lag in January, but growth to Japan (+27%, +218 MT) and a surprisingly robust trade to Canada (+33%, +182 MT), Europe (+90%, +365 MT) and South America (+100%, +390 MT) was more than enough to offset Chinese declines.

As we move further into 2023, global economic pressures are a key variable pushing back on growth in global demand, but as prices normalize, higher use of WPC80+ will be incentivized, especially as global economic pressure eases as we move through the back half of the year.

Source: USDEC

One year after a “horrible” flood swept through his northern New South Wales property, dairy farmer Peter Graham and his cows are still dealing with the aftermath.

“They don’t want to be milked,” he explained.

“It’s just taking a long time to get the cows back to where they were.”

The catastrophic event washed away hundreds of cows and many bales of fodder across the region.

Crops and pastures were destroyed, milk vats had to be discarded, and machinery, infrastructure, and homes were destroyed.

“It was pretty horrifying to see one and a half metres of water coming over the Richmond River… like a tidal wave,” Mr Graham said.

Cows leaving the dairy after having been milked.
Cows leaving Mr Graham’s Codrington farm’s dairy on a rainy afternoon a year after the floods.
Kim Honan (ABC Rural)

On his Codrington farm, his cattle had water almost up to their backs, while other farmers downstream had to watch their cattle being washed away.

“It’s been a long, slow, draining process to get back on track,” Mr Graham explained.

“I’m still on a very gravelly road; I’m not even close to the highway.”
Milk production is still low.

Mr Graham and his team worked tirelessly to control mastitis, treating up to 28 cows per day.

“I thought that was a lot, but it was nothing compared to others around me who were doing 90 or 100; some were treating their entire herd,” he explained.

Mastitis is an inflammation of the udder tissue that occurs frequently when a cow’s milking is interrupted, resulting in a reduction in the amount of milk produced.

“We were 34% of where we were [at the same time last year],” Mr Graham explained.

“And we thought it was serious, but the worst part is, we’re still at 50%.”

While the cows are no longer infected with mastitis, their milk production remains low, which could be due to stress.

Mr Graham stated that most dairy farmers he has spoken with in the region are still operating at 60% capacity.

He estimates that it will take another six months to return to pre-flood levels.
One step at a time

Darryl Kennedy and his daughter Amy Campbell were able to save all of their animals on their Dunbible property in the Tweed, but the flood has still had a significant impact on their business.

“We’ve been there for 65 years, and this is the worst flood we’ve ever had,” Mr Kennedy explained.

A man and woman dressed in blue shirts stand beneath a fig tree.
Darryl Kennedy and Amy Campbell estimate that rebuilding their herd to pre-flood levels will take four to five years.
Kim Honan (ABC Rural)

After their dairy was flooded, they were unable to milk their cows for 14 days.

“Then, when we started milking them, the machines weren’t working properly, and we had to tip that milk out on the ground,” Mr Kennedy explained.

Ms Campbell described the aftermath as emotional.

“I’m not sure which is worse: seeing the cows with all their mastitis experience or seeing the damage it’s done to my father — [and] having to go through that every day,” she said.

Paul Weir, a farmer in Tuncester, is used to floods, but the severity of this one has prompted him to consider leaving the industry.

“It didn’t seem right; it came and came, engulfing your assets,” he explained.

“It’s surreal to see the cows swimming away.”

He has decided to stay and raise his sheds on mounds to keep things out of reach after obtaining insurance.

A farm’s fence is lined with dead dairy cows.
When floodwaters inundated Paul Weir’s farm outside Lismore, he was devastated.
(Photo courtesy of Paul Weir)
The ice cream factory is still being rebuilt.

The dairy cooperative Norco, which has its headquarters, rural store, feed mill, and historic ice-cream factory in Lismore, plays an important role in the region’s dairy industry.

The factory, which employed 170 people, was severely flooded and is currently undergoing a major rebuild, which is expected to be completed by August.

Norco’s ice cream factory was flooded.
The floods in February inundated Norco’s ice cream factory. (Source: Norco)

They have elevated equipment, including electrical lines, by 15 metres in order to be above the next major flood.

In a factory, a man wears a white shirt and a black vest.
According to Michael Hampson, some farmers are still rebuilding.
Leah White (ABC North Coast)

Machines with new quick-release mechanisms will also be easier to move if a flood threatens.

According to Chief Executive Michael Hampson, the cooperative is attempting to assist its members in rebuilding their herds by providing interest-free loans that have been used to purchase 1,000 cows.

“It’s good to be able to provide them with additional means… to get through what was certainly the most difficult period that I’ve ever seen in the dairy industry,” he said.

Lyuba Pastushok’s farm’s cows are like her “cheeky children,” she explained in Ukrainian as she walked among her growing herd, softly cooing to them and petting their heads.

Her small family operation in Holoskovychi, a rural community an hour and a half east of the nearest city of Lviv in western Ukraine, had only five cows a few years ago.

She now looks after 25 cows, six of which she purchased after Russian forces invaded the country.

Wrapped in a kerchief against the cold, the Ukrainian matriarch addressed each by name, her voice full of motherly pride.

She attributes her success to the establishment of a Quebec-style co-op in her community, and she believes that a new Canadian dairy plant in the area will help the local industry grow even more.

In the face of the Russian invasion, the project has become an unlikely symbol of defiance.

Russia is stepping on Ukrainian farmers, Pastushok said through a translator during an interview in her farmhouse kitchen, “but we are developing in spite of them. Ukrainians are who we are.”

The $3 million dairy plant, funded by Global Affairs Canada, will use milk from local dairy co-ops to produce milk, yoghurt, sour cream, and hard and soft cheeses. These co-ops will also have a say in how the plant, which will employ 30 to 40 people, is run.

When war broke out last year, construction was already well underway, disrupting every aspect of life in the now-conflicted country.

Investors were initially hesitant to put money into a project in a conflict zone, according to Camil Côté, project officer for SOCODEVI, a development agency based in Quebec City that is spearheading the project.

The invasion halted work for about three months, until Canada offered another $2 million to restart it.

“We survived the winter, just like the rest of Ukraine,” Côté said from Nicaragua.

“We’ve had a few dangerous situations near the plant,” said Andriy Blinovskyy, project manager for Nabil, a corporation of local dairy co-ops.

“There was a missile explosion near the plant, and the electricity transformer station was destroyed about 10 kilometres away.”

After the explosion late last year, workers were forced to continue construction without heat, relying on a generator for power.

When completed, the plant will primarily supply the Lviv region with locally produced goods. Each room’s equipment and brand new, gleaming milk tanks are emblazoned with Canadian flags.

“The factory is regarded as ours. “This is our country, our home, and our family,” Pastushok said.

SOCODEVI pioneered the Quebec-style co-op in Ukraine over a decade ago. It enables small-scale producers with a few cows to band together to negotiate better prices.

“The needs in Ukraine are very similar to what they were in Canada 50 or 60 years ago,” SOCODEVI programme manager Erin Mackie said.

“They were created because farmers needed that collective response to get the value added and generate a better income for themselves,” she explained.

Ukrainian farmers were initially hesitant to join because the cooperative model reminded them of Soviet-era state-run operations. According to Mackie, the development agency worked hard to persuade them that the plans were, in fact, democratic and capitalist.

The model is largely based on Quebec’s Agropur, Canada’s largest dairy co-op.

“This is how Agropur started, with a small co-op where you process milk,” Céline Delhaes, a member of the co-board op’s of directors, said from her farm outside of Montreal.

She claims that negotiating fair prices as a group is much easier than negotiating one-on-one with large companies to process and sell their milk. She also stated that the profits would be reinvested in local communities.

Delhaes visited Ukraine several times prior to the COVID-19 pandemic to coach local farmers and assist them with the administrative aspects of establishing co-ops.

Before the war, the Ukrainian programmes were steadily expanding as more farmers, such as Pastushok, signed up.

“People began selling cows. Some were hospitalised, while others went abroad to work. And it turned out that cultivating the land became prohibitively expensive,” Pastushok explained.

She hopes that more farmers in the area will join her.

“We must band together. “As the proverb goes, ‘one man in the field is not a warrior,” she explained.

According to Mackie, the goal is to create a national movement in Ukraine similar to the dairy industry in Canada, and Canada’s decision to continue with the plant’s construction is a sign of faith in the country’s future.

“I have faith in the Ukrainian people to overcome this,” she said.

The milk plant is by far the most modern-looking structure in the neighbourhood, with its white siding and black roof standing out against the wood and stone neighbours.

Blinovskyy hopes to be able to accept milk from local cows this spring.

“It’s a very powerful sign for everyone — our enemies and our friends — that Canada supports Ukraine and that the plant will begin production,” he said.

The European Union’s recent sanction package against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine appears to be the first to specifically target the dairy industry.

According to the Russian Union of Dairy Producers, Soyuzmoloko, European companies will now stop exporting centrifugal cream separators, which are used to separate milk into skimmed milk and cream.

Heat exchangers, vacuum pumps, various types of transformers, and other electrical equipment, which are not exclusive to the dairy industry but are widely used at milk processing plants, are also restricted.
Imports of dairy equipment from other countries

According to Roman Chuybak, Soyuzmoloko’s manager for interaction with authorities, the new restrictions are unlikely to significantly deprive the Russian dairy industry of Western technologies.

“The [Russian] business has already been restricted for a year, and most of the newly sanctioned European goods were already extremely difficult or impossible to import into Russia,” Chuybak explained.

Russian dairy companies have switched to alternative suppliers as a result of these restrictions. Milk separators, for example, are purchased from Turkey, while other equipment is sourced from China and India, according to Chuybak, who added that Russian companies have managed to replace a significant portion of European imports.

On the other hand, Chuybak warned that the impact of Western sanctions on the Russian dairy industry should not be underestimated, and that not all equipment can be found on alternative markets. He predicted that the problems would “gradually worsen” as the list of sanctioned goods grew longer.

Western sanctions may have an even greater impact on the Russian dairy industry; on March 1, Turkish customs officials abruptly stopped allowing sanctioned goods bound for Russia to transit through Turkish territory. As a result, Turkish companies can now re-export European goods to Russian customers. Several Russian companies have admitted to importing some equipment through third countries such as Turkey, the UAE, and Kazakhstan, a practise known as parallel import.

DairyNZ lead scientist Paul Edwards told farmers and rural professionals at the Northland Dairy Development Trust conference that future dairy farming systems will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

He stated that the industry must be globally competitive, locally responsible, and regionally resilient now and in the future.

The dairy industry must work within domestic constraints, also known as the social licence to operate, while also dealing with regional and year-to-year variations.

Because 95% of New Zealand’s milk is exported, the country must ensure that its products are more appealing than competitors’.

He cited the current Northland Agricultural Research Farm trial in Dargaville on alternative pastures and low emissions as an example of the resilience effort.

NZ is already in a good position in terms of global competitiveness, but DairyNZ is tasked with determining where the NZ industry should be in a decade.

It is evaluating competitors, such as the efficiency of US mega-dairies, and milk alternatives to determine where it can be more competitive. The goal is not to replicate systems, but to improve the pasture-based farm systems in New Zealand.

DairyNZ researchers investigated mega-dairies and tested the concept against various scenarios:

• Business as we expect it to be, with existing trends continuing.

• Consumers’ awareness of product attributes such as footprint or welfare grows.

• The world may become more chaotic and isolated.

• Governments may impose more regulations, and society may impose more standards, and

• Agriculture could see a significant increase in productivity.

“We then look for common themes across the scenarios to see what is likely to be important for future dairy systems,” Edwards explained.

Labor, farm costs, footprint, animal care, and system transparency, which is about “demonstrating we are meeting consumer and regulatory expectations and providing product provenance,” were common themes.

Because of the limitations on increasing herd size and the difficulties in employing rural labour, labour is already a hot topic.

According to Edwards, milking is an important part of farm labour, and there have been some notable shifts in the use of once-a-day (OAD) and flexible milking strategies over the last decade, which have already been well documented.

Twice-a-day milking has dropped from 65% of farms to less than 40%, and 60% of farms now use full-season once-a-day, part-season OAD, or part-season flexible milking.

According to Edwards, Northland herds were only 27% full-season twice-a-day in 2021-22, with 30% full-season OAD, compared to 9% nationally.

Monitoring production for four seasons before and five seasons after switching to OAD milking on farms where seasonal production is less than 250kg/cow or 251-300kg reveals little change or even a slight improvement in production.

With a provincial average of 320kg in Northland, the preference for once-a-day milking is logical.

“It’s possible that the time saved will be used to better manage the farm,” he said.

While milking frequency can help to reduce labour requirements, on-farm demand during calving and mating still creates labour peaks.

Late last year, DairyNZ held a workshop for rural professionals and farmers, and it was determined that flattening labour demand throughout the year and within each day would be beneficial.

This could be accomplished by considering changes such as extended lactations and batch robotic milking.

Reduced calvings and matings due to extended lactation would undoubtedly save time, money, burnout, fatigue, and bobby calves. It may also improve animal welfare by improving reproductive performance and extending life.

A 24-month calving interval with half of the herd calving every year corresponds best to feed demand and reduces winter weather risks to cows.

“The modelling suggests that a Dargaville-type pasture curve may be more profitable,” Edwards said, but there are many assumptions and limited data.

DairyNZ is therefore establishing a farmlet-scale pilot at Scott Farm beginning in the 2023-24 season to investigate what cows can produce in their second year of lactation, as well as the relationship between feed supply and demand.

Batch robotic milking refers to group milking (similar to conventional milking) rather than voluntary milking, with milkings spread out over a 24-hour period.

“Current robotic technology on the market cannot directly replace a milker, which means a robot would be needed at every milking point, for example a 50-bail rotary would have 50 robots.

“With the obvious capital expenditure required for this, a system redesign is required,” Edwards explained.

Combining robotic milking with virtual herding technology and dividing the herd into batches of 100 cows is one example of a redesign that drastically reduces the number of robots required.

Production costs are linked to labour requirements, and DairyNZ has used an inflation-adjusted average milk price of $6.80 over the last decade to estimate where production costs may need to be in 2030.

This is calculated by converting historic milk price values to what they would be in today’s terms using the consumer price index, which accounts for inflation.

Assuming a 30% gross margin, the required operating expenses would be $4.76, which is 10% less than the actual farm expenses figure for 2019-20, which is $5.32.

“The technological gains … would add extra costs and it is part of our thinking to evaluate those costs and benefits to see if they stay within the required farm working expenses and generate the required margin.

“On the plus side, halving the number of matings and calvings would lower costs; however, the farmlet pilot will help quantify how this compares to changes in production.”

According to him, the rich data capture required for system transparency should be complementary to the goals of automation and system simplification.

“Another example of how data integration can provide management insights is heat stress.

“We can take a weather forecast and turn it into an indicator of heat stress, combine with grazing records and shelter knowledge, and present options for cow management.

“Then, following the event, we use data on what happened – actual weather data as well as animal behaviour captured on their smart halters – to review and refine management.”

Edwards stated that his Future Farming Systems project was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, and that it largely projected existing dairy farming trends.

“It is also critical that we re-examine old ideas through a new lens or purpose as operating contexts change.”

“In conclusion, this is an opportunity to lead change rather than be forced into it.”

Participants all along the dairy value chain are being squeezed, according to a new Rabobank report. Producer milk prices have fallen from lofty levels in 2022, while feed prices are at all-time highs. Processors and dairy cooperatives began the year by discounting costly inventory made with expensive milk. Meanwhile, rising interest rates and higher inflation are pressuring consumers to make more frugal purchases.

In the key export regions, year-on-year milk production growth has increased in 2023, compared to 2022’s low levels. Simultaneously, farmgate milk prices are catching up to global commodity market trends and have fallen. Expensive input costs continue to be a major headwind globally, and when combined with lower milk prices, they are putting pressure on farm-level margins. As a result, the slaughter of dairy cows has increased.

“Milk production from the Big 7 export regions is expected to grow by 0.7% year on year in 2023, following a 0.9% decline in 2022,” says Mary Ledman, Rabobank’s global sector strategist for dairy. “Rabobank reduced its 2023 forecast from 1% in the previous quarter. This slower growth is due to increased culling in the United States as well as weather-related production challenges in New Zealand, Brazil, and Argentina.”

Price Uncertainty Persists

Uncertainty in dairy market prices persists across regions and dairy products. A little more milk and a little less demand have both contributed to lower dairy commodity prices in the first quarter of 2023. Stock levels in key exporting regions, on the other hand, are not burdensome. Cheese and butter prices have fared the best, while the markets for skim and whole milk powder have yet to find a footing.

Consumers play a role in the story. In a complex macroeconomic environment, with core services inflation remaining high, there are growing signs of a slowdown in household consumption, which is likely to worsen in the coming months. “Consumers haven’t abandoned the dairy aisle,” Ledman says, “but they are looking for value.”

With an eye on Chinese demand

Lower global cheese, milk powder, and whey prices are expected to boost exports. To support dairy product prices in 2023, much will depend on internal Chinese policies and broader demand resilience.

Despite China’s retreat, global dairy trade in 2022 was better than expected. Exports to key importers such as Mexico, Indonesia, Japan, Algeria, and South Korea exceeded 2021 levels. “Through November 2022, total dairy product volume trade was within 1.5% of the previous year, despite a 20% reduction in Chinese imports,” Ledman notes. With China’s reopening, Rabobank expects foodservice revenues to increase by 1% to 2% over pre-Covid levels. “Looking ahead, China’s dairy imports in the first quarter of 2023 are expected to fall short of year-ago levels, with renewed buying interest developing in the second quarter of the year. Imports are expected to rise slightly year on year in the second half of 2023.”

Aliana Varvaloucas will tell you that her colleagues have seen “broken everything” in the homes of the dairy farmworkers she represents.

The Farm Worker Law Project’s managing attorney ticks off a list of damage, decay, and vermin that endangers human health and safety: broken windows, doors, floors, walls, stoves, water heaters, heaters, roofs, cabinets; slanted floors, sewage in showers and going into the ground around the housing; soft wet spongy floors, no locks on doors or windows; flies and bugs, broken steps; rooms with no windows, wall-to-wall rugs that haven’t been cleaned in years, filthy furniture, beg bugs, mosquitos, skunks living under housing, mice, rodents and rats.

While many who help farmworkers find the conditions appalling, she claims that workers rarely complain about their employer-provided living quarters, which include ageing mobile homes and farmhouses or, in some cases, dormitories in the barns themselves. einsteinerupload of. Without work or a place to live, they may be deported, as advocates estimate that 90 percent are from outside the United States, with the vast majority being undocumented. There appears to be no simple solution for workers whose bosses are also their landlords. The problem is exacerbated by a lack of oversight for dairy worker housing due to legal limitations, which advocates are working to change.

“There are six different farmworker housing statutes, and none of them apply to dairy housing,” said Varvaloucas, who is based in New Paltz. “Dairy farmworkers get lost in the shuffle. There is a massive legal loophole.”

Both in Albany and in Washington, there is some effort to create housing oversight. The New York Farm Bureau has requested that Governor Kathy Hochul restore $400,000 to its budget to support farm-provided housing inspections. In Washington, the bipartisan Farm Workforce Modernization Act was passed by lawmakers in the United States House of Representatives, which would move year-round dairy workers out of the shadows and into the H-2A visa programme, which requires the state Department of Health to inspect worker housing.

Advocates such as Varvaloucas argue that these measures are only the beginning of a much-needed overhaul for dairy farmworkers, who are isolated across vast swaths of the state’s rural landscape.

Ideally, she would like to see comprehensive immigration reform, but for the time being, she and other farmworker advocates would like the state to require inspections of all employer-provided housing.

“Inspection isn’t perfect, and there are problems at H-2A camps as well,” Varvaloucas said. “However, at least in those camps, there is a visit, and there is some kind of third-party authority overseeing things.”

Of course, not all farms provide workers with dilapidated, unsafe, or unsanitary housing. Immigrant advocates acknowledge that some farm owners welcome workers by providing adequate housing. One Saratoga County farmer, for example, has been identified by county social workers as having worker apartments as well as “his own home.”

He recently spoke with the Times Union, requesting anonymity in order to protect his undocumented workers from deportation. He believes that providing decent and safe housing is a wise investment.

“They’re decent people,” he said. “It’s worthwhile. They are extremely valuable to us.”

The Saratoga Immigration Coalition’s Terry Diggory agreed. He stated that these employees are trained in animal care.

“What the farmers really value are people who already have that experience and can supervise a herd,” said Diggory, who drives workers to appointments and on errands on a regular basis. “They take care of medical problems that arise, identify diseases, attend calves’ births, there is a wide range of things that the workers must be specialists in.”

They must also milk the herd twice or three times per day.

Workers on a Saratoga County farm care for, feed, and milk a herd of over 1,000 cows. That dairyman fully supports the bill in Washington that would incorporate these year-round employees into the seasonal or migrant worker H-2A programme. Currently, that programme allows workers to travel from their home country to work for a limited time period, such as during an apple orchard harvest or during the summer at a hotel in Lake George. Dairy farms cannot currently participate because they are year-round operations.

“The country requires assistance,” the farmer stated. “We are eager to receive assistance. We can’t find it anywhere. … I’d hoped to persuade the government to do something simple and effective. There is currently no programme available to us.”

However, Emma Kreyche, advocacy director for the Worker Justice Center of New York, which operates in 33 counties, believes the act creates a new problem. It will bind the worker to a single farm. If they leave or are fired, they will be deported as well as lose their home.

“As a worker’s rights organisation, we are categorically opposed to the expansion of the H-2A programme, not because we dislike H-2A workers, but because the H-2A programme has a history of labour abuses,” she said. “It’s true that H-2A housing is more strictly regulated. But for an employer to say, “If we get access to the visa programme, we’ll improve our housing,” is just plain wrong. It’s a very problematic solution to a problem that could be solved through better state regulation and oversight in worker housing more broadly.”

This is a critical issue in rural areas throughout the state, which, according to the US Department of Agriculture, is one of the top five dairy producers in the country. According to the state Farm Bureau, there are over 3,600 dairy farms in the state that produce 15 billion pounds of milk from 625,000 cows each year. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, nearly 26,000 farm labourers work 150 days or more on farms, including dairy farms. There was no breakdown figure for dairy farm labourers.

According to a 2019 study on New York dairy farmworkers conducted by Kreyche’s Workers Justice Center, 97 percent of dairy farmworkers live in farm-provided housing. Of those polled, 58 percent had bug or insect infestations in their homes, 48 percent did not have door locks, 32 percent had holes in their walls or floors, and another 32 percent had poor ventilation.

Among other things, the report recommended that the state “ensure that all farmworkers live in safe and dignified housing.”

“Dairy housing must meet all housing requirements and should provide safe, sanitary housing regardless of immigration status,” said Steve Ammerman, a Farm Bureau spokesman, in an email. “Local code enforcement and health departments have jurisdiction and can be called in if there is a complaint. If a problem arises, the New York Farm Bureau encourages workers to notify the appropriate authorities. The same is true for workers’ rights organisations. They are not permitted to make allegations without first reporting them to authorities. If they do not, I will question why.”

Dairy farmworkers, according to Kreyche, do not want their advocates to report the conditions because they fear punishment.

“I went to a farm near Albany where workers were housed in essentially a cesspool without proper sewage,” Kreyche explained. “There was a shattered window, exposed wiring, and electricity running through extension cords. All of this is illegal. You should contact the local building inspector. But the question is, what will be the outcome? First, you must feel supported or empowered, empowered enough to not be concerned about what will happen.”

Even supportive farmers discover that their employees are hesitant to report a housing issue.

“They aren’t very good at telling me what’s wrong, so I have to go through and check the house on a regular basis,” the Saratoga County farmer explained.

He recalls a time when one of his employees’ apartment’s heat was broken.

“I asked how long this had been going on, and they looked at you as if they didn’t want to admit it or bother me,” he explained. “Everything has to be kept track of.”

That is one of the recommendations in the report “Creating Positive Workplaces: A Guidebook for Dairy Producers” by Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences’ Farmworker Program. It recommends a monthly inspection that includes a 27-item checklist that includes checking that the stove works, the cabinets aren’t broken, and the toilet isn’t in need of repair. It also includes ensuring that there are enough beds for workers, as well as locks on doors, heat, and electricity.

“Good housing contributes to worker satisfaction and increased farm productivity,” according to the guidebook. “Some farmers place a high priority on providing good-quality housing, while others find housing to be a necessary but challenging aspect of farm management. This situation can be difficult for both the owners of the property and the occupants. Given that dairy farmers typically provide housing for their employees, having clear housing expectations for standards of care, maintenance, visitors, and security issues is critical.”

In addition, Cornell is training inspectors who will visit farms and collect housing data in a “non-subjective, non-regulatory” manner.

Nonetheless, Varvaloucas believes that the power dynamic between the worker and the farmer makes the workers vulnerable.

“Even with an anonymous complaint, an employer can easily determine who called a lawyer or local code enforcement,” Varvaloucas said. “This is why annual inspections would be extremely beneficial. They relieve the worker of the burden of coming forward because there is now a third-party enforcement agency that inspects the housing at regular intervals. Owners should have no trouble passing inspection if their housing is up to code.”

Would prohibiting nondairy alternatives such as oat milk, soy milk, and almond milk from using the word “milk” make a difference to grocery shoppers?

Vermont Senator Peter Welch joined other lawmakers this week in criticising the FDA’s recent decision to allow plant-based beverages to continue using the term “milk.” The DAIRY PRIDE Act of 2023 is being pushed by Welch and others. Nondairy products made from nuts, seeds, plants, and algae would no longer be labelled with dairy terms like milk, yoghurt, or cheese.

Farmers and industry workers joined Welch at the Howrigan Dairy Farm in Sheldon on Friday. He claims that dairy alternatives obscure the true meaning of milk and cause consumer confusion. “If the term’milk’ is to be used, it must be used correctly. Milk is derived from the mammary gland of a cow. It is not a different product. Whether oat, soy, or plant-based. “Those are fantastic, but it’s not milk,” Welch explained.

But what about the general public? “I drink dairy,” Lydia Lacroix explained.

“It has to be cows milk all the way,” Paul Delabrurere said. “A cow gives milk. I milked cows for most of my life, so I understand what it’s all about. The other milk is a forgery.”

While some coffee drinkers dismiss milk alternatives, others see both sides. “I usually put regular milk in my coffee because it’s delicious. “And for smoothies, I’ll use almond for calories and such,” Natalie Rashie explained. “I’d probably call milk’milk,’ and almond milk a’milk substitute.'”

Dairy farmers like Joanna Lidback, owner of The Farm at Wheeler Mountain in Westmore, would be delighted. “I believe we have real milk. We have milk that has been lactated by mammals. “We have cows, and this is what they do,” Lidback explained. She claims that dairy farmers have earned the right to use the milk label and the associated market benefits, and that alternative products rely on the name as a marketing tool. “When other groups take advantage of that, you know, it’s offensive.”

Others see this debate as a sign that the milk market is changing. “These beverages have diffused themselves into the marketplace,” said Jane Kolodinsky, chair of the University of Vermont’s Community Development and Applied Economics department. She claims that when coconut milk first hit the market, there wasn’t much pushback on the name, but as the market floods with products, there is value in using the term for plant-based milks because they can serve as a viable alternative. “In that sense, these plant-based milks compete with dairy.”

Kolodinsky believes it is natural for dairy to be defensive, but dairy could also shake up its labelling by employing the same strategies as milk alternatives. She believes that the most important aspect for the consumer is clarity, so that they can choose what is best for them. “Consumers must use their market power as much as marketers do,” she says.

Fonterra and Nestlé are collaborating to build New Zealand’s first commercially viable net zero carbon emissions dairy farm.

The dairy companies have formed a new partnership for this five-year project. The project’s demonstration farm is a 290-hectare property that surrounds Fonterra’s Whareroa site.

The farm, run in collaboration with Dairy Trust Taranaki, will examine all aspects of farm operations in order to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by mid-2027. The goal is to achieve net zero carbon emissions within ten years.

Dairy Trust Taranaki will collaborate with Fonterra and industry partners to reduce total farm emissions, including methane. The goal is to use solutions that are good for the farmer, good for the cow, and good for the milk.

The project’s lessons learned and activities will be shared with farmers through open days, allowing them to adopt the techniques and technologies most appropriate for their own farms. According to the companies, the practises must be economically viable and practical, as well as accessible to all farmers.
Developing novel solutions

According to Fonterra CEO Miles Hurrell, the collaboration will aid both Fonterra and Nestlé in meeting their greenhouse gas emission targets. “Through its pasture-based dairy system, New Zealand already provides some of the most sustainable nutrition in the world. This new collaboration will look for ways to reduce emissions even further, increasing the country’s low-emissions advantage over the rest of the world.”

According to Hurrell, sustainability is an important part of Fonterra’s strategy. “By 2050, we hope to be net zero. We know that collaborating with others will result in greater gains for both the Co-op and the country. Working with partners like Nestlé provides us with the best opportunity to develop innovative solutions to local and global industry challenges.”

The Fonterra CEO emphasises that the project will also assist Fonterra and Nestlé customers in meeting their objectives. “Nestlé has ambitious plans, and we look forward to working together to discover systems that can assist our farmer owners in building on the already solid foundation they have.”

Nestlé New Zealand CEO Jennifer Chappell stated that the Taranaki farm would build on Nestlé’s global efforts to transform the dairy industry. “Dairy is our single most important ingredient, and our vision is that the future of dairy can be net zero,” Chappell says, adding, “It’s critical that we work with dairy farmers and their communities.”
Greenhouse gas farmer assistance programme

Nestlé currently has over 100 pilot projects underway with partners worldwide, including New Zealand. The company already has 20 farms working towards the goal of net zero emissions. Working towards a net zero farm, according to Chappell, entails considering all aspects of the farm, from cow nutrition to carbon sequestration. “We will share what we learn along the way across the dairy industry, with the ultimate goal of eventually mainstreaming on-farm practises that will reduce the dairy industry’s climate impact.”

Nestlé anticipates that the new project will help the company meet its goal of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, which includes reducing emissions by 20% by 2025 and 50% by 2030.

Fonterra and Nestlé’s collaboration also includes the launch of a greenhouse gas farmer support pilot programme. This multi-year project will provide additional assistance to enrolled Fonterra supplying farms in order to implement changes aimed at lowering their on-farm emissions.

This could include solutions such as better feed and pasture management and increased milk production efficiency. The opt-in pilot will begin with approximately 50 farms and will be scaled up over the next three years.

A market surplus of volumes, falling producer prices, and far too low producer income. These issues are recurring themes in dairy sector developments and characterise the current situation. To combat this trying situation, the European Milk Board (EMB) was established in 2006 and developed a market-oriented concept for crisis prevention known as the Market Responsibility Programme (MRP), which it has made available to the EU.
Activating the MRP and halting the volume increase

“Dairy producers in Europe are currently experiencing a drop in prices, which is threatening their farms,” said EMB President Kjartan Poulsen. Following a brief, unusual period of near-cost-covering prices, rising volumes and declining demand have created a market imbalance. During their press conference at the Paris Agricultural Show, the EMB Board emphasised one key point: The EU Commission should have the monitoring agency assess the market and implement volume reductions based on the MRP’s example.
Policies are required to put an end to retailer brand price dumping.

“The market situation is rough,” added Boris Gondouin, French EMB Board member, during the press conference, pointing out yet another negative market development: In many European countries, policymakers are allowing retailers to push national and fair brands brought to market by dairy farmers themselves off the shelves by price dumping with their own private labels, particularly since the Covid crisis and the war in Ukraine. Strong protests are already taking place in Europe against these unfair trade practises, as was the case, for example, in Belgium and France at the beginning of February. “Policymakers must intervene to stop this unfair behaviour,” Gondouin added. “Without adequate regulation, we will quickly reach a point where too much has been removed and destroyed, and there will be no turning back.”

As the EMB stated further during its press conference, producers’ market position must be actively strengthened. “This industry requires strong, horizontal producer organisations that negotiate with dairies. Policymakers must help to facilitate and support this. “Ideally, these organisations would be transnational in order to cover the market in larger regions,” Poulsen added, before urging European dairy farmers to join appropriate organisations in order to increase dairy farmers’ market impact and bargaining power.

Several Russian food companies, including Russia’s largest meat producer, Cherkizovo, and the country’s largest dairy company, EkoNiva, have expressed interest in acquiring the Danone business in the country, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, citing anonymous market sources.

Danone may sell 13 dairy plants it operated in Russia before ceasing operations in October 2022. To keep a seat on the board of directors, the company wants to sell at least 75% of its Russian business, but not 100%. Danone also wants to make a buyback option a contractual requirement, according to Kommersant.

The buyback option may complicate the company’s withdrawal from Russia. According to Dmitry Gabishev, managing partner of Moscow-based think tank Peregrine Capital, this stage of the selloff could severely limit the number of potential buyers.

Danone has not responded.
Market to be affected

Furthermore, Danone intends to pass only Russian brands to the new owner. Prostokvashino, Rastishka, and Tyoma are among them. International brands such as Activia, Actimel, and Oikos will be prohibited from being sold in Russia.

According to Alexei Gruzdev, CEO of Russian research firm Streda Consulting, the Prostokvashino brand is unlikely to suffer from a change in ownership due to its strong position in the Russian dairy market. The prohibition on using the Activia and Actimel brands, on the other hand, could have a serious impact because they provided a significant share of sales, according to Gruzdev.

Danone was once Russia’s second-largest dairy company, processing 3,400 tonnes of raw milk daily. The company dominates several segments of the Russian dairy market, including fermented dairy products.

Alexander Petrikov, head of the All-Russian Institute of Agrarian Problems and Informatics, stated in January that the Danone business in Russia should not be sold in pieces. He warned that selling all dairy plants one by one would devastate Danone’s ecosystem and harm Russia’s entire dairy market.

“Estimating the resulting reputational losses is difficult. They will inevitably arise not only for buyers, but also for the corporation’s numerous Russian partners – raw milk and other input suppliers, universities and research institutes with which Danone has established partnerships,” Petrikov predicted.

Following recently announced guidance over non-dairy products using the “milk” name, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced the Dairy Pride Act.

It would require non-dairy products made from nuts, seeds, plants and algae to no longer be labeled with dairy terms, like milk, cheese, or yogurt.

The National Milk Producers Federation says the legislation is needed now more than ever.

“DAIRY PRIDE is needed more than ever, now that FDA has offered guidance on the labeling of plant-based beverages that, while taking steps in the right direction, ultimately doesn’t remedy the problem it seeks to solve, which is the proven confusion among consumers created when plant-based beverages steal dairy terms to make their products appear healthier than they really are,” said NMPF President Jim Mulhern.

According to a new FDA proposal, beverage producers responsible for making plant-based milk alternatives should be allowed to use the term “milk” to describe their products even if they contain no actual dairy content.

The FDA announced on Wednesday that it is sharing its “current view on the naming of plant-based milk” and will welcome public feedback as it works to finalise its guidelines on the subject.

The FDA stated in a 29-page draught guidance that it is considering the potential terminology allowance because most consumers understand the differences between plant- and animal-produced milk due to the growth of the non-dairy market. Because of this expansion, the term “milk” has come to refer to the byproduct produced when water is combined with a tree nut, legume, seed, or grain.

“The range of plant-based milk alternatives available in the market has also greatly expanded from soy, rice, and almond-based to cashew, coconut, flaxseed, hazelnut, hemp seed, macadamia nut, oat, pea, peanut, pecan, quinoa, and walnut-based,” the FDA wrote in its draught guidance.

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The US Food and Drug Administration is proposing that plant-based milk manufacturers be allowed to call their products “milk” despite the fact that they contain no dairy.

The US Food and Drug Administration is proposing that plant-based milk manufacturers be allowed to call their products “milk” despite the fact that they contain no dairy. (iStock)

According to the agency, plant-based milk consumption in the United States increased from one in every five households in 2010 to one in every three households in 2016.

Retail sales of plant-based milk are expected to reach $2.4 billion by 2020.

According to the FDA, the majority of consumer responses it has received about plant-based milk cite changing diets as the primary reason for their dairy-free purchase.
Plant-based milks, such as almond milk and soy milk, may be marketed as milk.

Plant-based milks, such as almond milk and soy milk, may be marketed as milk. (iStock)

The FDA wrote in the draught guidance’s “Consumer Understanding of Plant-based Milk Alternatives” section that multiple studies show that the majority of retail shoppers understand that plant-based milk alternatives do not contain animal-produced milk, and they are not confused when they see the word “milk” on a plant-based beverage label.

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“According to one consumer survey, approximately three-quarters of its respondents understood that plant-based milk alternatives do not contain milk; less than 10% believed that plant-based milk alternatives do contain milk, and the remainder did not know,” the FDA continued.

When discussing plant-based milk alternatives, the FDA also stated that commissioned and internally conducted focus groups revealed that the term “milk” is “strongly rooted” in consumer vocabulary.
The United States Food and Drug Administration is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services that ensures the safety, efficacy, and security of food, drugs, and biological products. Its headquarters are in White Oak, Maryland.

The United States Food and Drug Administration is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services that ensures the safety, efficacy, and security of food, drugs, and biological products. Its headquarters are in White Oak, Maryland. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)

The FDA listed soy milk and almond milk as plant-based milk alternatives that “appear to be established by common usage.”

Consumers who took part in the FDA’s focus groups reportedly stated that they “feel familiar and comfortable” using the word “milk” instead of words like “beverage” or “drink” when referring to plant-based alternatives.

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Participants in focus groups stated that they buy plant-based milk to accommodate allergies, intolerances to dairy milk, and lifestyle choices such as following a vegan diet or preferring a liquid with lower fat and cholesterol content.

The FDA has the authority under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) to establish definitions and standards of identity for foods, such as naming conventions for common or usual foods, conformity mandates, and label requirements.

In 1973, the FDA established a standard of identity for milk, defining it as “the lacteal secretion, practically free of colostrum, obtained by the complete milking of one or more healthy cows.”
Cows are the most common dairy animal in the United States. Goats, sheep, and buffalo are examples of dairy animals.

Cows are the most common dairy animal in the United States. Goats, sheep, and buffalo are examples of dairy animals. (iStock)

According to the FDA, beverage products that claim to be milk must conform to the definition and standard of milk and bear clear labelling that describes it as such.

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“Products that do not purport to be or are not represented as milk are exempt from these requirements,” the FDA stated. “Plant-based milk substitutes are not milk because they are made from plant materials rather than cow lacteal secretion. As a result, they are not permitted to be sold as “milk” under the FD&C Act.”

Although many plant-based milk alternatives are labelled with names that bear the term’milk’ (e.g.,’soy milk,’ they do not purport to be nor are they represented as milk,” according to the FDA, and consumers generally understand this despite the dairy-free product being placed next to animal milk in grocery stores.

There is no FDA standard of identity for plant-based milk. It also does not require labelling that identifies plant-based milk as “imitation” milk because the FD&C Act defines imitation foods based on resemblance and nutritional inferiority.
Plant-based milk can be made from a variety of tree nuts, legumes, seeds, and grains.

The FDA’s draught guidance acknowledged that the agency recognises the need to consider First Amendment free speech considerations when regulating commercial speech for food and beverage labelling.

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The FDA recognises that the nutritional content of plant-based and animal-produced milk varies greatly depending on the raw materials and processing methods used, vitamin and mineral fortification, and the addition of other ingredients such as sugar and oil.

The FDA encourages the use of “dairy-free” and “non-dairy” labelling on plant-based milk products to ensure “truthful and not misleading label statements” for consumers, but it is not required in the same way that naming the plant-based milk source is, according to the draught guidance.

The FDA’s proposal suggests that plant-based milk manufacturers volunteer nutrient statements describing how their product differs nutritionally from animal-produced milk, so that consumers can make informed dietary decisions.

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“[The] FDA seeks to improve dietary patterns in the United States to aid in the reduction of the burden of nutrition-related chronic diseases and to advance health equity,” the agency stated in its overview and purpose section. “Making sure that plant-based milk alternative labels are clear will help consumers quickly determine the attributes of products they are purchasing for themselves and their families.”

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The USDA recommends that people over the age of two consume two to three cups of dairy per day.

The USDA recommends that people over the age of two consume two to three cups of dairy per day. (iStock)

In 2018, the FDA requested public feedback on the “Use of Dairy Food Names in the Labeling of Plant-Based Products.”

According to reports, the agency received over 13,000 comments on plant-based foods with dairy terms in their names.

The FDA’s current draught guidance on “Labeling of Plant-Based Milk Alternatives and Voluntary Nutrient Statements: Industry Guidance” is available at fda.gov/media/165420/download.

Consumers can submit comments on the naming and nutrition labelling of plant-based milk via regulations.gov or by mailing a comment to the FDA’s dockets management team.

Food and Drug Administration 5630 Fishers Lane, Rm 1061 Rockville, MD 20852 Dockets Management

The FDA has requested that all written comments about plant-based milk be identified with the docket number FDA-2023-D-0451.

Public comments must be submitted by Monday, April 24, 2023, in order for the FDA to consider consumer concerns before working on the final version of its guidance.

Plant-based milk producers and dairy farm associations have long disagreed about the use of the term “milk,” and both have urged the FDA to establish clear and enforceable guidelines.

The use of the term “milk” on plant-based milk packaging has been challenged in courts across the country, including in Wisconsin, which is known as “America’s Dairyland” or “The Cheese State.”
In grocery stores and supermarkets, customers have a variety of milk options to choose from.

The Office of Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin issued a press release on behalf of dairy farmers, calling the FDA’s current proposal “ill-advised guidance on the unfair use of dairy terms to mislabel plant-based products.”

According to the Plant Based Foods Association, a national trade association representing leading plant-based food companies, the FDA’s recommendation for voluntary nutrient statements on plant-based milk is “unprecedented, unwarranted, and a solution in search of a problem.”