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Minnesota Milk Producers Association brings their plan forward as DMI prioritizes work on schools, hunger, foodservice and industry partnerships.
Compiled by staff
April 10, 2020
4 Min Read
Jevtic/Thinkstock
As the dairy industry reels from the impacts of unplanned school closures, reduced restaurant orders and other disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, dairy industry leaders are coming out with plans.
Earlier this week, the International Dairy Foods Association and National Milk Producers Federation introduced their Milk Crisis Plan for USDA. The American Dairy Coalition applauded the efforts of NMPF and IDFA in pulling together the Milk Crisis Plan, while offering ideas to improve the proposal.
The Minnesota Milk Producers Association has entering the fray, bringing forth its Dairy CORE Program. The Minnesota plan, which is praised by the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance, keeps the direct payments to producers, but doesn't condition those payments on production cutbacks.
Components of the plan include:
Instructing USDA to pay U.S. dairy producers $3/cwt for 100% of their March 2020 baseline, for each of the months in the second quarter of the year, irrespective of market prices. The payment would be done as a single lump sum payment in April 2020.
Encourage producer-owned cooperatives and private milk buyers to develop supply adjustment incentive programs which are most appropriate for their milk supply situation.
Instead of reopening 2020 signup for Dairy Margin Coverage or compensating processors for dumped milk, concentrate stimulus funds to a single, large lump sum payment directly paid to each U.S. dairy producer.
The Wisconsin Dairy Alliance says the Minnesota CORE program resolves the regionalization issue.
"It does not unduly place burden of production cuts on half the nation’s dairymen simply because of their location," said Cindy Leitner, president of the alliance, in a statement. "Cows in the northern half of the nation produce much more milk during the summer months than those in the south, due to heat stress and seasonal calving patterns."
The Minnesota plan doesn't put the government in the position to pick winners and losers, Leitner said.
"In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, there will be no 'magic bullets' that resolve the dairy sector’s woes overnight," she said. "The USDA has $9.5 billion in discretionary funding to invest in our struggling industry. Its impending challenge is to find a way to do the most good."
DMI announces business priority shift
Dairy Management Inc., meanwhile, outlined a shift in its business plan in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue.
DMI, which manages the national dairy checkoff, has prioritized work focused on three key areas: schools, hunger and foodservice and industry partnerships.
DMI President Barb O’Brien said the checkoff’s mission of building sales and trust on behalf of U.S. dairy farmers and importers will prioritize limiting milk disposal and redirecting supply to serve those in greatest need over the next two months.
Details of the effort include:
Ensuring access to school meals: The goal is to ensure school children will continue to receive meals. This is critical not only for the health of children but to maintain the 7% of fluid milk that flows through the school channel. GENYOUth created the “For Schools’ Sake – Help Us Feed Our Nation’s Kids!” movement, which so far has generated $3 million in corporate and individual donations. More than 5,000 applications have been submitted by school districts across the country requesting up to $3,000 grants for equipment, packaging and other supplies. GENYOUth seeks to raise an additional $12 million to satisfy these requests.
Helping food banks meet growing need: DMI is working with cooperatives and companies, quick serve and foodservice partners and Feeding America to broaden access to dairy foods for the growing number of people facing food insecurity. The checkoff is convening cooperative leaders seeking to find a destination for excess supply with local processors and food banks. This effort already is diverting more than 100,000 gallons of milk per week in Texas, New Mexico, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, New York and New England into the hunger system.
Convening partners across supply chain: Working with domestic and international partners to realign the supply of dairy products to those in need while working through U.S. Dairy Export Council to assure dairy products continue or resume flowing into the critical export market. After more than 10 years of partnership with dairy farmers, Domino’s is working with GENYOUth and local organizations to pilot a grab-and-go meal program at 31 public school sites in Miami. So far, approximately 23,000 meals have been made available and similar opportunities and other locations are being explored.
“We are urgently executing these strategies across the U.S. to help dairy farmers in this time of crisis, which is more important now than ever in our history,” O'Brien said.
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