In a rapidly changing business world, U.S. dairy producers have a great opportunity to work through the dairy checkoff to create their own future, according to Tom Gallagher, chief executive officer of Dairy Management Inc.™ (DMI), which manages the national dairy checkoff program.
“Dairy producers are creating their future through innovation, leadership and results,” Gallagher said, speaking at the 2008 National Dairy Promotion and Research Board (NDB)/United Dairy Industry Association (UDIA)/National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) Joint Annual Meeting in Nashville. “They are seeing a positive return on their checkoff investment. And, they had the foresight to initiate the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy to address common industry challenges.”
By working together to create its own future, “the dairy industry can help solve some of the nation’s most pressing problems — producing safe and plentiful food, becoming energy-independent and overcoming obesity,” Gallagher said.
One measure of how dairy producers are creating their own future relates to positive results on their checkoff investment, Gallagher cited the annual USDA Report to Congress, which concluded that, from the years 1998 to 2007, the dairy checkoff returned $5 for every dollar dairy producers invested. In addition, the U.S. Dairy Export Council® has helped exports grow to nearly 11 percent of total dairy production.
Gallagher also pointed to the dairy checkoff’s success in forming partnerships that result in new products. Examples include:
* In foodservice, an investment of less than $10 million over the past five years has resulted in increased sales of more than a billion pounds of milk, cheese and yogurt each year. A partnership with Starbucks has resulted in the launch of Vivanno, a smoothie that contains milk and whey protein. The new product will use an estimated 550 million pounds of milk.
* A partnership with General Mills has resulted in Yoplait frozen yogurt chips that are blended with milk for an instant, delicious and nutritious drink.
* A school program that reaches more than 25 million children about the lifelong benefits of dairy, and that offers plastic, resealable bottles of milk in nearly 11,000 schools – at a time when rising costs could have forced those schools to scale back.
* A new five-year partnership with the National Football League® gives dairy unprecedented access to players and teams to help promote milk consumption and physical fitness in more than 40,000 schools across the country.