Dairy checkoff leaders are calling on farmers and companies to collaborate more to build sales for everyone. During remarks before more than 900 dairy farmers and industry representatives attending the 2014 joint annual meeting of United Dairy Industry Association, National Dairy Promotion and Research Board and National Milk Producers Federation in Grapevine, Texas, Tom Gallagher, CEO of Dairy Management Inc. (DMI), which manages the national dairy checkoff, said there is a changing consumer perception of value pertaining to dairy.
“Traditional consumer interests like taste, price and convenience are just table stakes to get you in the game,” he said. “Today, there is no ‘the consumer.’ There are many, and they are complex and demanding. The Chinese consumer places safety first. The foreign ingredient buyer wants traceability. The millennial consumer is interested in agricultural production practices like animal care. Others are concerned with dairy’s relationship to water quality, or access to water.”
Earlier in the conference, Jim Mulhern, CEO of National Milk Producers Federation, had said it was “critically important to our industry’s future that we not only focus greater attention on consumer issues, but that we do so proactively, and with a strategy to turn those issues from a liability to an opportunity.”
Gallagher believes there is great opportunity for dairy today. Most consumers, thought leaders and farmers all share the same goal of feeding a growing world population safely and affordably by producing food in a way that sustains the planet, and the people who produce the food, he said.
Gallagher went on to say that agriculture can be viewed either as a problem, OR a solution to the problem.
“Which will it be? Do we want to be viewed as a defiant industry that creates enemies, or as leaders collaborating to make the world a better place?”
He urged the dairy industry to be collaborative with stakeholders who want to work with dairy; develop and document the science and systems to support dairy’s position, or create new positions; and act transparently, opening doors to understand how consumers think and admit when dairy has flaws.