Monthly Archives: October 2021

National Dairy Shrine 2021 Pioneer Dieter Krieg, ‘a trailblazer with energy, enthusiasm, dedication’

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 8, 2021

MADISON, Wis. – “It is impossible to overstate the impact Dieter Krieg and Farmshine have had on the dairy industry in 42 years visiting dairy farms and dairy events across the United States. His interviews with top dairymen and dairy leaders have implanted ideas of change to almost all his readers at one time or another over the years,” writes Carl Brown of F.M. Brown Sons, who nominated Dieter for the National Dairy Shrine Hall of Fame Pioneer Leader award.

On Sept. 30 at the National Dairy Shrine (NDS) dinner, Dieter was one of four 2021 Pioneers to be recognized.

Dieter Krieg

“Dieter has been a trailblazer in dairy journalism and occupies a special place in supporting and educating dairy producers and youth. I personally realized the impact that Farmshine was having during one of our Dairy Science Club spring trips,” writes Dale Oliver, Penn State Dairy and Animal Science assistant teaching professor in a letter of recommendation.

“Our group traveled to Arizona to visit some of the leading dairies in that state. One producer wanted to know (the students’) opinions about a recent article published in Farmshine. It was at that point that our students gained a perspective that this publication was not just reaching dairy producers in Pennsylvania but had begun to develop a much broader following,” Oliver said.

Yes, Dieter is known for thought-provoking editorials. A free press is not something he takes for granted, having left Communist East Germany with his family at the age of 10 for freedom in the United States.

Oliver notes that, “Dieter is a humble, caring man who does not seek attention, although he readily provides publicity to others.”

Surprise! There are more pictures and publicity on these two pages than Dieter may be comfortable with, but each one illustrates a connection that can be multiplied many times over — stretching far beyond the few examples here from the NDS awards dinner.
In fact, if you ask him what he has enjoyed most as a publisher, Dieter will tell you it’s the people.

Ever since the June NDS announcement of the 2021 Pioneer recognition, we have been hearing from some of those people — readers, producers, advertisers, colleagues, and former interns who credit Dieter as a mentor, “taking a chance” on them, “giving them a start” that blossomed into careers today that continue that network, touching the lives of others in the dairy industry.

The response has been so overwhelming, we can only capture the essence of so many responses.

Whether the first Farmshine off the press in September 1979 (right) or one of the most recent ‘favorite covers’ 42 years later in September 2021 (left), Dieter Krieg has been publishing the dairy news to Farmshine subscribers across Pennsylvania, across the United States and even in other countries 51 weeks a year. That’s 2,142 weeks, and it doesn’t get old. In that time, he has touched the lives of many as they have touched his. From the chronicles of Rudolph, his famed Oldsmobile driven over 730,000 miles to the most memorable April Fools’, and from the big stories and thought-provoking editorials to the weekly DHIA’s and announcements, Dieter has established a relationship with thousands of readers who look forward to Farmshine every week. The staff and contributors to Farmshine each week are grateful, and we echo what Dieter said in his award acceptance speech that the readers are to be thanked for helping make Farmshine what it is. After all, it’s about cows and farming, but it’s really about the people.

From the paper paste-up and wax-board days to the digital era, Dieter continues Farmshine’s mission of rising each week to cover farming and agribusiness as the first and likely only weekly dairy-focused newspaper with over 13,000 subscribers nationwide.

In his letter of recommendation, former Pennsylvania Holstein Association executive director Ken Raney explains that, “Dieter has ‘done it all’ for Farmshine, he is the editor, feature writer, advertising manager, layout, etc., as the paper has grown. His personal approach to stories has created friendships all over the world. Farmshine not only has current dairy information but features successful dairymen of all types, so readers can garner new ideas.”

Ken also describes Dieter as we know him, “an unassuming enthusiast who welcomes ideas, looks for innovative ways to share the dairy industry story and has been a leader in print media, before many publications of this type were available.”

Writes Stephanie Meyers of Merck, “I was Dieter’s first Farmshine intern in 1989. I stopped by the NDS reception to congratulate him and thank him for giving me my start in dairy journalism, communications and marketing. I’m so thankful he hired me and for teaching me the ropes of dairy journalism and encouraging me to pursue my dreams of a career in dairy communications and marketing. It’s a joy to see him recognized for his many contributions to the dairy industry and for his commitment to telling the stories of dairy farmers.”

Josh Hushon of Cargill writes of what it meant to also be an intern with the paper. “This award is so well deserved. Dieter took a chance on me as a summer intern before anyone else was willing. I was 19 at the time, didn’t really know what I was going to do in life, and had a minuscule portfolio of writing. Despite what I didn’t have, Dieter saw what I did have, which was a passion for the dairy industry and work ethic developed on our farm. He opened the first door for me and I am eternally grateful for that.”

Giving back what he learned, Josh seeks to mentor others and wrote a blog a couple years ago after looking back on his own career path and pointing out moments when the right mentor came along with the right opportunity at the right time.

“One of those mentors is Dieter Krieg, who I recently reconnected with through the Holstein Foundation. He was a huge mentor early in my career as I was learning how to be a storyteller and communicator,” writes Josh.

Andrea Haines echoes these sentiments. Today she operates her own business, ALH Word and Image, and she also looks back on her pivotal internship with Dieter at Farmshine.

“I am forever thankful for Dieter and the opportunity he and his family provided me early on in my career. Finding an ‘internship’ within Farmshine for two summers really taught me how to write, edit, piece together a newspaper (wax-adhered layouts), and most importantly, how to network with people of the dairy industry. I will never forget the many rides in Rudolph (the famed 730,000-plus mile Oldsmobile) and long nights putting together the newspaper,” Andrea recalls.

Karen Wheatley, another intern with a career in the dairy industry notes “Dieter was my mentor too, and the man who got me interested in ‘really’ writing!”

Former Lancaster Farming editor Andy Andrews notes that, “Dieter has been the voice of dairy agribusiness for four decades! He is the publisher and editor the industry has come to rely on; great reporting and fearless with his observations. Dairy farmers have been blessed with his hard work and ‘udder’ devotion.”

Dairy producers also express their appreciation, and friends recount stories. Dave Bitler of Berks County, Pa., notes that he has always been very proud to call Dieter a friend. Recalling the summer of 1973, Dave writes: “We milked together at Dr. Carl Troop’s south of Quarryville. I always enjoyed Dieter’s company and his sharing about his family’s history in Germany and their coming to the United States. Looking back on my life back then as a new high school graduate, I was probably annoying, but Dieter was always kind.”

John and Linda Kisner of northern Pennsylvania write their thoughts as Farmshine readers. Linda recalls Dieter driving through a local town and stopping for gas, seeing the paper that had pictures of their triplet calves on the cover. “He looked us up, came out and took pictures (in Rudolph). Dad loved it.”

“Sometimes it just takes someone in a position to shine a light on certain issues,” adds John. “I think being independent with his own publication has allowed him the opportunity to do that a few times over the years. Where would we be without that sort of initiative?”

Another Pennsylvania farmer, Jeremy Meck, recalls being in 4-H with Dieter as one of the CowsRus 4-H leaders. “I remember learning that he had a small barn and milked a few cows. Even though he was the editor of a great farming newspaper, he still woke up every morning to milk cows before work,” writes Jeremy. “He is a role model for the industry.”

So many more thoughts have been written, but this one brings us back full circle. You see, Dieter wanted to be a dairy farmer, to follow in his father’s footsteps. As his father and brother moved the dairy from Pennsylvania to Florida and grew it to over 500 cows in the 1970s, Dieter wanted to find a farmer to work for in Pennsylvania and maybe find a transition situation where he could work toward having a smaller farm of his own. He confesses that was the reason he took that first newspaper job as editor of the farm page in the Pennsylvania Mirror.

What better way to meet farmers and build connections?

In his last semester at Penn State in Dairy and Animal Science, Dieter had taken a creative writing course because he did enjoy writing letters to family still in Germany, and he enjoyed writing about life on the farm (which later became a popular Farmshine column).

Right off the bat, he innovated that farm page in the Pennsylvania Mirror using a photo of a barn and placing various ag news stories on the side of that barn.

“I was told it wasn’t normal newspaper style, but my goal was that people would not overlook the farm page,” Dieter recalls. To this day, Dieter loves creating page layouts and using big pictures.

It was a hit, and he was a natural, and he found that he loved the job. So the job that was taken originally to meet and connect with more farmers to potentially work into a farm management position turned out to be the calling he was born to follow, which led him to blaze a trail for a weekly all-dairy newspaper in 1979 — no small feat.

After 42 years, what has he loved most? You guessed it: the people. While there is satisfaction in writing the stories and putting the finished product together, for Dieter, it’s really all about the people.

Like agriculture, the newspaper business has its ups and downs, and getting started meant many years of long hours putting the paper together and much travel gathering news and stories. When he looks back, even those early 100-hour weeks, though trying, were enjoyable. Sitting at a banquet, for instance, isn’t really work when you enjoy it, he says.

The mission of Farmshine, he says, always was and still is to get the word out, to tell the story, to cover the issues.

When he looks back at how it all came together, Dieter told the NDS awards dinner crowd, it is obvious God’s hand was working through it because all the pieces came together even before he realized Farmshine would be born. He expressed sincere gratitude for all who had a hand in it, including those who saw something in him to encourage along the way.

In her letter, Mary Shenk Creek of Palmyra Farms notes that, “Dieter and his staff address all aspects of the dairy industry from commercially producing milk to the purebred sector and including alternative niche market opportunities. They do a wonderful job of highlighting individuals and unique accomplishments to shine a light on the personal side of our industry. Dieter is not afraid to tackle controversial issues and takes great effort to show an unbiased report while allowing editorials that stimulate thought.”

She sums up what so many feel, including me, having worked with Dieter on staff and in the later years as a freelance Farmshine contributor…

Mary says it so well: “The things I admire most about Dieter are his energy, enthusiasm and dedication. He is relentless in his commitment to serving agriculture and the dairy industry.”

Thank you Dieter for being a dairy journalism trailblazer, for starting Farmshine, the unique weekly all dairy newspaper 42 years ago, for shining a light, telling the stories, building connections, and touching the lives of others through the news, and so much more.

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Will DMI’s transformation strategy leave dairy unrecognizable?

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It was lights-camera-action… but there were barely 25 people, over half of them media and checkoff representatives, attending the DMI ‘tanbark talk’ on dairy transformation at the World Dairy Expo. On the big screens, joining virtually, was Bob Johansen, an author and strategist talking about “the VUCA” world. He was hired by DMI to work through scenarios of the future to arrive at the transformation model. On the stage from left are Dwyer Williams, DMI chief transformation officer; Tom Gallagher, outgoing DMI CEO; Lee Kinnard, a Wisconsin dairy producer; Peter Vitaliano, NMPF vice president of economic policy and market research; and Eve Pollet, DMI’s senior vice president of strategic intelligence. Taking notes at a table in the foreground — seated to the left of the camera man and light-show operator — is Jay Hoyt, a New York dairy producer who challenged DMI’s “bright” transformation picture saying nothing will be bright about the future for dairy farmers, if we can’t provide and promote cold, whole milk to children.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 15, 2021

MADISON, Wis. — A picture of the future of dairy was painted with a boastful sort of “insider” arrogance by dairy checkoff leaders on the second day of the World Dairy Expo during DMI’s ‘tanbark talk’ on transformation. It left me both shocked and uninspired, exasperated.

The very next day, a message of light and inspiration was presented in a meeting hosted by American Dairy Coalition (ADC), talking about inspiring loyal consumers as part of a discussion on the viability of America’s dairy farms in the face of rapidly launching confusion via plant-based and lab-grown lookalikes.

Without necessarily challenging DMI’s assumptions about Generation Z and the “future” of dairy, ADC’s guest speaker, a consumer-packaged-goods expert, painted a different picture. From the marketing surveys shared, it appears that future consumers, those under 23 years old today, are much more apt to be brand loyal than their Millennial parents. 

That’s the hope and light DMI left out of their presentation. DMI is taking their “knowledge” of Gen Z in a different direction.

The question is: Who is inspiring loyalty to milk, whole milk, real milk, real dairy, real beef, real animal protein? Not DMI.

DMI wants to take your checkoff dollars down into the darkness of the gaming world. Their guest speaker and futurist collaborator talked about the Gen Z gamers, the immersive learning, the tik tok generation.

One comment made me cringe. “It’s something parents and grandparents don’t like, but it is good for dairy,” said futurist Bob Johansen about the dark world of gaming that has, in his opinion, claimed the perspectives and choices of the next generation.

Repeating the platitude of “meeting consumers where they are”, the DMI presentation left this reporter in a bit of a shock. Do we really know where consumers are? Who is telling us these things and what is it really based on? So much more enlightening was the next day’s presentation about “inspiring loyalty” by reminding consumers about “what they love.”

I believe most dairy farmers want to inspire consumers to what’s real in life instead of being sucked into the unreal and confusing world of gaming.

Where are my thoughts going and what did you miss in the DMI panel at Expo? Not much, really. I heard the DMI dairy transformation strategist suggest that she “likes saying milk has 13 essential nutrients,” but that she thinks it will be so much “cooler to identify, annotate and digitize the 2500 to 3000 metabolites in milk and then be able to pair them to products and brands in the personalized app-driven diets of the future.”

That’s right folks, DMI paints a picture of future diets digitized by apps and algorithms to match up to the individual metabolic needs and desires of consumers. In other words, they won’t really know WHAT they are consuming, just a mix-and-match of elements as presented by global processing corporations that are “all-in” for this future of food confusion.

DMI is in the self-fulfilling prophecy business. They aren’t meeting consumers where they are. They aren’t inspiring consumers to be better, eat better, and enjoy dairy. They are touting USDA dietary policy to the point that even their fellow GENYOUth board members and collaborators are, in some cases, promoting the competition.

Case in point this week, chef Carla Hall, a longtime board member of GENYOUth, who DMI leaders have touted over the past 10 years, is right now running Youtube videos teaching consumers “how to go plant-based without going vegan.”

And guess what? Hall is targeting milk for the ousting. She promotes almond, oat, cashew etc ‘milks’ and guides consumers on how to replace real milk with these fakes in their diets, their recipes, their lives.

When a Facebook post about Hall’s milk-replacing Youtube videos was posted by a New York dairy producer asking “why is this person on the GENYOUth board?” another dairy producer responded wondering if she really was on the dairy-farmer-founded and primarily funded GENYOUth board.

Yours truly, here, replied on Facebook with a simple “yes she is” accompanied by a link to the listing of GENYOUth board members and a screenshot of the page showing Carla Hall among the GENYOUth board member list. Within a couple hours of my comment on that post, I got a notice from Facebook telling me I had “violated Facebook’s community standards.” They called my comment “fraudulent spam” and deleted it!

Yes, my reply was deleted, and I was warned that if I continued my violation of Facebook’s community standards, action would be taken against me.

Wow, I thought, that’s out of left field, isn’t it? I simply showed the truth with a link and a picture that the plant-based beverage promoter is, in fact, on the GENYOUth board.

Yes folks, DMI wants you to believe that your future viability as dairy farmers relies on playing nice with the plant-based and lab-grown lookalikes – blending in with them – and losing your identity.  After all, they say, just be glad your milk has 2500 metabolites that can be digitized and annotated!

They want you to believe that the gaming industry is “good” for dairy while acknowledging that it’s not so good for kids. They want you to partner in that world of unreality and confusion instead of being an inspiration of clarity and a champion for what’s real.

My question is: Do we want to be a beacon of light and inspire Gen Z? Or do we want to stoop to the level of this dark space to “fit in” or “be cool”.

In that space, are those teens and young adults even listening to our story? Or are we being drowned out by the bells and whistles of gaming as it sucks them in and drags them down. The entire gaming world is full of ambiguity and confusion, but this is what DMI and its futurist say the world is going to be, that it is a VUCA world, and we must accept it.

VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. It’s a sort of catchall phrase for what we all know. Yes, the world is crazy out there!

In that talk, DMI leaders said they hired futurist Bob Johansen to help them look at four models for the future of dairy from a range of possible scenarios. They chose the transformation model, and that is how they are transforming checkoff dollars.

“Accept it,” they say, Mr. and Mrs. Dairy Farmer, you must accept that ambiguous messaging is the name of the game for the future of dairy, one that assigns the attributes you are selling in a mix-and-match environment.

Farmers have been dealing with VUCA forever. We’ve long understood that markets are volatile, the future is uncertain, the industry is complicated, and yes, the world and its direction are certainly ambiguous.

However, must dairy farmers accept and enbrace this ambiguity in the messages they send to consumers about the milk they produce?

Must they tow the line of 3-a-day fat-free and low-fat dairy as the only message of clarity because that is the edict written by USDA in its Dietary Guidelines?

Should they be pursuing the digitization of 2500 milk metabolites as the way to pair dairy with certain brands and products to fit personalized diets and ignore the backdrop of confusion about what real milk and dairy are?

The first rule of marketing 101 is that ambiguous messages don’t work. They leave the impression that there’s nothing special about one choice over another.

But that’s the point for the multinational global corporations, some of which make up the pre-competitive work of DMI’s Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy.

They call it innovation, but it is really subjugation – the act of bringing farmers and consumers under domination and control.

They are asking dairy farmers to give away our precious wholesome true message about milk – especially whole milk — so that processors can mix and match protein sources as they see fit.

Of course, they tell us this is for sustainability’s sake and for saving the planet by keeping diets within planetary boundaries, but we all know the score: It’s about corporate profits and control of food… and land.

We knew that already, didn’t we? The dairy transformation strategy is to be the protein that processors choose to include by being the low-cost producer. 

DMI isn’t interested in promoting whole milk or the nutritional value of whole milk as a superior choice. This is obvious no matter how ardently the outgoing DMI CEO Tom Gallagher repeats the mantra that DMI championed the return to full-fat dairy and whole milk. 

He said this again during the World Dairy Expo discussion when New York producer Jay Hoyt stood up to say none of this “bright” transformation future is going to matter if we can’t promote and provide cold whole milk to kids. Gallagher’s response was that no one would be talking about whole milk if DMI had not been the leader on the full-fat dairy research and whole milk message. (What did I miss?)

The transformation strategy of DMI is to be a versatile, low-cost commodity that can be separated to blend and fit and filter its way into dozens of new products, that it has 2500 metabolites that can be digitized and annotated and then selected for personalized diets offered on iphone apps, that it ‘meets Gen Z where they are’ in the immersive learning world of gaming.

This is a game for sure. But who wins?  Certainly not dairy farmers or consumers.

The transformation strategy has no place for promotion of 100% real whole milk and dairy, nor a clear message about what milk is, what it does for you. No place to remind consumers about why they love milk because they’ve helped over the past decade parrot USDA’s propaganda so that Gen Z doesn’t even know they love milk because they weren’t given whole milk – until grassroots promotion efforts started turning those tables.

If we all stand by and twiddle our thumbs — letting the global corporations make the decisions, control the narrative, bow to activist triggers, and define ‘where our consumers are’– by the time DMI and friends are done with dairy, it will be unrecognizable, without a clear message about the real milk diligently produced on our dairy farms.

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Positive insights on domestic milk promotion: ‘There’s hope. We have work to do.’

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By the end of the 3-hour discussion on milk marketing and future viability of U.S. dairy farms, hosted by the American Dairy Coalition on Sept. 30, over 40 people — producers and others from east to west — had flowed into the Monona Room at World Dairy Expo and an estimated 30 people attended online.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 8, 2021

MADISON, Wis. – A new and different – essentially vigorous — paradigm in milk marketing and promotion was the focus of an American Dairy Coalition discussion in Madison on Sept. 30th during the 54th World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin.

Bill Gutrich, senior director of food industry engagement-USA with Elanco Animal Health shared his insights and experience having spent his career in the consumer-packaged goods sector for global brands like Coca Cola, McDonalds and Samsung before coming into animal agriculture three years ago.

“We have a great product and producers do a great job, but we need to increase domestic dairy consumption, specifically,” said Gutrich to an in-person audience of over 50 people (flowing in and out of the Monona Room of the WDE Exhibition Hall). Another 30 people attending virtually online.

The ADC event attracted dairy producer thought leaders from east to west and generated follow up discussion and good questions. ADC CEO Laurie Fischer said the discussion is a starting point and hopes to see allied industries that are committed to animal agriculture join in on the bandwagon to shift the milk message, the animal protein message, in the face of the accelerated barrage of new plant-based and lab-grown lookalikes.

“We need a group such as yourselves to help us move forward,” said Fischer. “We are in this together.”

Using IRI data from DMI, Gutrich sees opportunity in targeting the largest group of most loyal customers — milk-only households — along with the next largest sector of households with both milk and alternatives to remind them why they love milk. ‘Own the why’ instead of getting caught up in the ‘hows’ and ‘whats’ and processes and blends that respond to criticisms from the smallest and least loyal subsets of consumers. 

One statistic Gutrich shared that was quite revealing is that 51% of total sales in the milk section are fluid milk, but only 33% of the retail milk space is devoted to milk. On the other hand, he said, 9% of total sales in the milk section are plant-based non-dairy alternatives, but almost twice the space — 17% of the milk space is devoted to non-dairy alternatives because there are so many varieties.

With so many different brands and variations of non-dairy alternative products coming onto the market and ramping up rapidly, this supply chain effort is essentially crowding out real milk in a manner that is not consistent with true consumer demand.

Likewise, the anti-animal activists are small in number but loud in advocacy. In effect, the gap between perception and reality on messaging as well as shelf-space vs. sales is that smaller sales, smaller numbers flood milk’s space and take positive attention away from milk, but this is not necessarily by consumer choice.

If Gutrich had a magic wand, he’d likely look to make milk competitive in the total beverage market, to reframe the competition and look at milk’s share of all drinks instead of share of the milk aisle. For example, consumers love cold whole milk, so if the message puts that first, then already it is connecting with the most loyal sets of consumers and connecting to their ‘why’ to build growth from that solid point.

When innovation focuses mostly on sustainability, then fewer resources are devoted to getting the message right in connecting with what consumers want.

Bill Gutrich, senior director of food industry engagement for Elanco Animal Health had a positive and hopeful message about focusing on domestic consumption and shifting the milk message to “inspire consumer loyalty to animal protein.”

Gutrich’s insights and discussion are consistent with his role with Elanco engaging the food industry and connecting the food chain. He talks to companies and purveyors, and from those conversations, it’s clear, he said, the people attacking animal agriculture are from the outside, pushing in. They don’t want animal ag to exist, but these are not the people we need to connect with to build loyalty to animal protein.

As the son of a police officer, Gutrich said his personal mission is to elevate the level of respect people have for farmers, much like the efforts elevating respect for our country’s veterans and law enforcement.

He said it comes down to “inspiring consumer loyalty to animal protein.”

Having worked around talented marketers outside of animal agriculture, Gutrich said he has come into the animal protein sector seeing “how we market our beautiful, incredible products to consumers.

“Every dollar starts in the hand of a consumer over the counter,” he said, describing how good marketing starts with the ‘why’, not the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’

“What are the emotional needs you need to connect with?” he wondered aloud. “They will buy the why.”

Using a borrowed analogy of the Craftsman drill, he said the ‘what’ is the buyer wants a hole. The ‘how’ is the drill. But the ‘why’ is they want to do it themselves.

The ‘why’ is what wins customer loyalty and offers the potential for a premium, Gutrich explained, noting that the key is to identify the ‘why’ and attribute it, and then “own it. That’s what great brands do.”

For Starbucks, the ‘why’ is the whole coffee-drinking experience. For Mountain Dew it is the ‘energy.’

In the dairy sector, Gutrich gave the example of Sargento Cheese, where the ‘why’ is ‘The Real Cheese People.’

“What did Kraft do?” he asked. “They labeled their cheese ‘made without hormones.’ What does that have to do with my ‘why’?”

These types of labels introduce something scary to consumers, and it has been proven in surveys and market research that these claims have little to do with their ‘why.’

“What this actually does is undermine their trust in the brand and the category,” said Gutrich, “and in the long run it’s bad for both. People want to think about serving a rich protein food, and we’re talking to them about hormones.”

Good marketing talks about consumers. Bad marketing talks about products and processes, according to Gutrich.

“Loyalty is a feeling,” he said, explaining a successful strategy communicates with consumers about the why, not so much about the process, the sustainability. Yes, sustainability and processes need to be handled, but that’s not connecting with consumers on an emotional level about their ‘why.’

“Own your consumer’s ‘why’, don’t let your critics determine your ‘why,’” he said. “All great brands have critics, but they handle the criticism separately, and keep marketing to why people love them.”

Gutrich gave some vivid emotional-connection examples: “Don’t you love how butter melts on your raisin toast or your cold milk on your cereal?”

In another non-ag example, he showed how Michelin tires own the safety-why, Goodyear owns performance. They keep their whole message consistently on their consumers’ ‘why.’

“Protein is hot,” said Gutrich. “Why aren’t we owning protein?”

The peanut butter brands own protein, and people believe peanut butter to be higher in protein than it is.

“We own protein,” said Gutrich about animal agriculture. “But instead of owning it, we create confusing talking points about the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’ instead of owning the ‘whys.’”

Gutrich noted that supermarket scanner data show how consumers vote with their dollars, but when producers are told that they must ‘own’ sustainability because 85% of consumers want to see it and want to prioritize climate impact in their food choices, the question becomes, how were those questions asked?

When consumers are questioned with an ‘aided awareness’ style of questioning, of course they will say yes. But that percentage drops to 9% when the question does not include ‘aided awareness.’

Among consumers under 23, the Generation Z, Gutrich shared surveys showing this generation to have a higher overall level of brand loyalty (68%) compared with millennials (40%).

“There’s hope,” said Gutrich.

On fluid milk sales, specifically, he observed the well-known saga of sales decline over time, and the steep decline since 2000, but he has a different perspective on it.

“The dairy industry did this to themselves with over 10 years of ‘buy my milk with no hormones,’” he said. “Instead of focusing on your consumer’s ‘why’, the industry opened this chasm of 13% for milk alternatives to climb in.”

He analyzed domestic consumption figures from 1950 to the present, noting that domestic consumption is the issue, and it’s where the focus most likely should be. When domestic consumption growth is put beside U.S. population growth, the sales growth ultimately shows that dairy has “lost its share of stomach.” This is looking at domestic data only, excluding export sales.

“Ultimately, this means we have work to do,” said Gutrich. “How do we get back to the 1950s?”

Well, there’s no time-machine; however, he had a positive message about this, stressing that the non-dairy alternatives “are not going to take us down. Milk is in almost 95% of households. Let’s worry about our own sales growth and not worry about the alternatives.”

Breaking out the percentages, Gutrich showed that 94% of households include milk, 42% have both milk and alternatives, 3% are exclusively plant-based, and 52% are exclusively milk.

A successful brand would look at that breakdown and say: “We want to grow our loyal customers and go after the people that are closer to the ones that love milk. We want to remind them why they love milk so much.”

But instead, there are all of these triggers in the way and all of these other conversations that move the message away from the consumer’s ‘why,’ – away from the ‘why’ of the loyal or closest to loyal consumers fluid milk can build from.

“If we can continue to do better on these triggers like animal welfare, environment, carbon footprint, that’s fine, but we make it worse by talking a lot about it,” he said. “Get the marketing right. It’s about balance. The packaging dynamics are also amazingly important.”

To be continued



Ag Secretary says ‘Dairy will change’, economist digs into how, why

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Using a graphic pulled from the September 10, 2021 edition of Farmshine in which a follow up story ran about Danone dropping 89 organic dairy farms from its Horizon brand — all of its Horizon farms in the Northeast — Bozic explained that the ‘social mission’ of cooperatives is to market all of their members’ milk. He said the “primary function of the future” for the Federal Milk Marketing Orders — as an extension of the cooperatives — is to ensure market access for dairy farms. “Market Orders are there to ensure orderly consolidation at a humane pace,” he declared.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Sept. 24, 2021

HARRISBURG, Pa. – ‘Turning the page’ was the theme for the annual Financial and Risk Management Conference where key takeaways about a changing dairy industry were presented.

The conference was hosted by the Center for Dairy Excellence Sept. 21 in Harrisburg.

Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding summarized his own thoughts: “I am still very positive about dairy, but dairy will change. It is changing,” he said.

The Center’s risk management educator Zach Myers set the stage for attending lenders, vendors, producers and industry talking about Dairy Margin Coverage and Dairy Revenue Protection and how these programs have worked (more on that in a separate article.)

Digging into the stress — the ‘change’ — was Marin Bozic, University of Minnesota associate professor of applied economics and dairy foods marketing, who also serves as facilitator for the Midwest Dairy Growth Alliance. He dug right into how and why, discussing some of the Federal Milk Marketing Order complexities, industry trends and pricing relationships. He made the case that more flexibility, competition and innovation are needed in the Federal Orders for a “level playing field” so winners and losers can “self-select.”

Bringing up the 89 organic producers Danone will drop from Horizon next year, Bozic said it is an example that, “One new farm in Indiana replaced 89 or 90 farms in the Northeast, and they can do that. There is nothing illegal about it. They could say they have a fiduciary responsibility to stakeholders and are minding their bottom line, but none of that helps you if 90 producers get dumped in a year.”

He pointed out the “social mission” of the cooperatives is to leave no member behind, so remaining an independent producer carries more risk today than in the past.

Bozic connected the dots to say the “primary function of the future for Federal Milk Marketing Orders — as an extension of the milk cooperatives — is to ensure market access for dairy producers.

“Market orders are there to ensure orderly consolidation at a humane pace,” he declared.

That’s a change from the central promise of the FMMOs today, which Bozic described earlier as “broken.”

“To navigate our businesses over the next year and longer,” said Bozic, “we have to count the passes and see the gorilla” — a nod to the visual exercise he had the audience participate in.

Bozic mentioned a few gorillas in milk. Gorillas in the FMMOs, in risk management, in dairy markets and in the macroeconomic situation – what else is going on in the world.

He showed graphs of what Producer Price Differentials (PPDs) looked like for the Northeast in 2020, the $4 and $5 negatives that represented cash flow bleeding, equity bleeding.

While the futures show the view out to the horizon over the next 6, 12, 15 months that would suggest there won’t be a repeat of that carnage, Bozic cited some of these risks, or gorillas, in the market and in world events that could represent shocks that can make the whole thing “go haywire again.”

Observing that the FMMOs are not the same today as when they were designed many decades ago, Bozic stepped conference attendees through the various long- and short-term impacts that reduce PPD, such as declining Class I utilization compared with increasing Class IV utilization and production.

“Orders were designed around the assumption that there would be plenty of fluid milk usage (as a percentage of total production), and we can just take it and designate it to be the highest and use those funds to make everyone whole,” said Bozic.

“The central promise of the FMMOs is that if your milk is as good as your neighbor’s, you get paid the same, so one farmer does not bid against another for market access and a good price,” he asserted. “That promise is now getting broken, not as much here, the East Coast FMMOs still have Class I.”

The next effect in the Northeast is the rise of protein tests. This impact comes through two channels where higher protein reduces PPD, the economist explained.

“Envision FMMOs as all processors paying into the pool and then taking from the pool. First they pay to the pool with classified pricing based on their respective milk solids. Class I pays on pounds of skim milk as volume, not on protein pounds,” he explained. “Even if sales are the same and the only thing that changes is protein, those (Class I) processors would pay the same amount (on skim) into the pool and take more money out (on protein) so there is less money remaining and a lower PPD.”

The second way higher protein production affects PPD is when the value of protein is lower in the powder than it is in the cheese. The butter/powder plant pays to the pool on nonfat solids price but takes money from the pool on protein price, “so that spread between the value of protein in cheese and powder also leaves less money for PPD,” said Bozic.

He explained the Class III price as an index of butterfat, protein and solids, in a straight formula that equals the class price. “When Class III price is higher than Class IV price, the predicted PPD for the Northeast Order declines,” said Bozic. “It’s almost linear.”

Conversely, when IV is above III, PPD goes up. “This has to do with paying the pool based on protein and nonfat solids, but when handlers take money out of the pool for components, everyone takes protein price leaving less money in the pool for PPD.

Bozic explained the demand shock to this system when the Food Box program “focused on smaller packages of cheese to put in every box. They didn’t take bulk powder and butter. So we went from a record low cheese price on the CME to a record high and no one expected this.”

The pull of 5% of the cheese supply for immediate delivery had everyone scrambling, said Bozic.

The amount of spare cheese available was not as high a volume as the government wanted to buy so cheese went from being long to short, and the price skyrocketed. This translated to an historically higher gap between Class III and IV prices as wide as $10 apart.

So why not just send more milk to make cheese? Bozic maintains that Class IV processing is accustomed to “balancing” fluid milk seasonality so there is extra capacity in that system.

Not so with Class III because those plants already run at capacity. “That’s the only way processors of commodity cheese make margin is to run at capacity, so when the demand shock came, and spare product was used up, there was no spare capacity and the price went higher. That was the main driver of negative PPD in 2020,” said Bozic.

Will it happen again? Bozic doesn’t foresee Food box programs with the same intensity in the future, but, “yes, it can happen, but I would say you need to have a pandemic in an election year. Don’t count on a program like this.”

The industry did ask USDA back in the 2008-09 recession to buy consumer packaged cheese instead of bulk commodities, so it could move instead of being stored to overhang the market later. That wasn’t working either.

“Now we understand that this other method disturbs PPDs so the dairy industry is united behind a more balanced approach,” said Bozic, describing the next iteration of purchases through the Dairy Donation Program will not be as aggressive in moving the markets by three orders of magnitude.”

Bozic said quick rallies and crashes impact PPDs also because of advance pricing on Class I based on the first two weeks of the prior month and announced pricing for the other classes at the end of the month.

Bozic explained why the change in Class I pricing was made: “The dairy industry wants to attract new distributors like Starbucks and McDonalds that are used to hedging their input costs. They don’t want to change prices every month. They want it to be what it is for a year, so the industry wants stable, predictable milk price costs to win favor with new distribution channels by making it easier for them to hedge.”

He said the new average plus 74 cents was designed to be revenue neutral. Looking forward, when Classes III and IV have less than $1.48/cwt spread, PPD under the new system is higher than under the old. But the most it can be higher is by 74 cents on Class I, which translates to 20 cents on the blend price.

“The best case scenario is to add 20 cents to the blend price, but when Classes III and IV are far apart “the PPD can go haywire. Bottom line, the upside benefit of the averaging method with 74-cent adjuster is limited but the downside risk is big,” said Bozic.