Tag Archives: food

Organizations react to USDA, HHS picks as Trump nominates Brooke Rollins to top Agriculture post

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Brooke Rollins, photo courtesy America First Policy Institute

Bringing whole milk choice back to schools could align with Rollins’ and Kennedy’s priorities

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, November 29, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Elect Donald Trump has nominated Brooke Rollins of Fort Worth, Texas to be the 33rd U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. She would be the second woman to serve in the top USDA post, the first being Ann Veneman in 2001 under President George W. Bush.

Trump’s announcement Saturday, Nov. 23 brought ripples of surprise across ag media outlets after many had floated a long list of other names under consideration.

In the end, it came down to Rollins, a lawyer and trusted advisor who previously served on Trump’s 2016 Economic Advisory Council as well as Director of Domestic Policy Council and Assistant to the President for Strategic Initiatives in Trump’s first term.

Rollins has spent the past four years as founder and CEO of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Trump highlighted her commitment to American farmers, food self-sufficiency, and rural small-town restoration.

The AFPI has not had much to say on agriculture, specifically, but has advocated for a ban on China’s ownership of American farmland. Rollins also spoke out against any sort of carbon or methane tax in a 2018 Texas Public Policy Foundation broadcast.

“As our next Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke will spearhead the effort to protect American farmers who are truly the backbone of our country,” Trump stated.

Raised with a generational ranching background in the small town of Glen Rose, Texas, Rollins was involved in 4-H and FFA leadership and credits her high school ag teacher for “changing her life.”

She earned her B.S. in agriculture development at Texas A&M and spent her public policy career in nonprofit and governmental leadership at the state and federal levels. 

She and her husband Mark have four teenage children, who avidly show cattle.

While searches for paper or interview trails on her agriculture policy positions come up mostly empty, what can be gleaned is that Rollins has the President-Elect’s ear and a penchant for analyzing issues with an ear to those affected, not just the ‘experts.’ 

In a post on X (formerly twitter), Rollins thanked Trump for “the opportunity to serve… It will be the honor of my life to fight for America’s farmers and our Nation’s agricultural communities. This is big stuff for a small-town ag girl from Glen Rose, Texas… Who’s ready to Make Agriculture Great Again?”

Ag and dairy organizations responded. Several took the opportunity to also weigh-in on Trump’s nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a week earlier for Secretary of Health and Human Services with the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

The two departments jointly issue the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) every five years, which USDA uses to regulate meals (and milk) served at schools, daycares, and senior centers. A large chunk of USDA’s massive budget and staff administer and regulate nutrition programs. 

The next cycle of DGAs is already in process with the two new USDA and HHS secretaries tasked with finalizing the 2025-30 DGAs by the end of next year that will set the rules for schools and other nutrition programs for years to come.

American Dairy Coalition CEO Laurie Fischer observed in a statement that the incoming secretaries will have the opportunity “to fix food nutrition policy, such as a long overdue reform of the Dietary Guidelines that govern school meals where children have been prohibited from choosing whole milk and 2% milk since 2010.”

Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee chairman Bernie Morrissey also expressed hope that Rollins and Kennedy, if confirmed by the Senate, will work together to bring the choice of whole milk back to schools. 

“For far too long, America’s children have been deprived of the choice of delicious, nutrient-dense whole milk. USDA requires schools to only offer fat-free and 1% low-fat milk. Many children throw that milk away, so they are missing nature’s nutrition powerhouse. Now, more than ever, we need to offer the “good stuff,’” Morrissey stated, adding that “Rollins is a mother, and that helps. We have mothers on our committee and they really get it.” 

He explained that his committee includes dairy farmers, allied industry representation, a recently retired internal medicine doctor, school nurse, school foodservice director, and former school board director who have worked on this issue over more than a decade. He wants the incoming secretaries to understand the problem so they can unwind the decades of worsening low-fat rules that pave the way for more ultra-processing leaving children with less nutrient-dense choices and unfavorable nutrition and health outcomes.

“We look forward to working with the next Administration on reforms that allow dairy farmers to market the whole milk they produce and allow children the opportunity to choose milk they will love,” Morrissey added. “Our friends at the 97 Milk organization are doing a wonderful job educating the public. Now, we just need real leaders willing to stand up and roll back the federal ban on whole milk in schools. We are eager to help Make America Healthy Again and Make Agriculture Great Again.”

The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) has conducted surveys showing the vast majority of parents want their kids to have the choice of whole milk at school. 

In his response to the Rollins and Kennedy nominations, IDFA CEO Michael Dykes, DVM also highlighted the joint nutrition roles of USDA and HHS, citing the need to “enhance the diet quality of Americans, protect the integrity of food production and processing, and establish a regulatory environment that drives innovation and efficiency… to continue leading the world in the production of high-quality dairy nutrition.” 

In a follow up interview with ADC, Fischer said dairy labeling integrity is another big issue for dairy farmers in the wheelhouse of both USDA and HHS. “We hope to see the restoration of labeling integrity in the dairy case when it comes to plant-based lookalikes that don’t even come close to real dairy’s nutrition. That includes the regulation and clear labeling of these novel bioengineered fake ‘dairy’ and ‘meat’ lab-created proteins.” 

More broadly, she cited the need for real world application of sound farmer-led policy and innovation that meet the realities farmers face daily. 

“ADC looks forward to working with the next Secretary on ways to reduce redundancies and wasteful spending to improve efficiency so more of the dollars intended to support farms get to the actual farmers. We are encouraged by Rollins’ history with the Office of American Innovation in Trump’s first term because our farmers are key innovators and lifelong stewards of natural resources,” she said. 

As of Nov. 26, National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) had not yet released a public statement to the media on the nominations of either Rollins or Kennedy, stating simply in a social media post on X: “Congratulations to Brooke Rollins on her nomination to become the next USDA Secretary. Dairy farmers are ready to hit the ground running in 2025!” 

National Cattlemen’s Beef Association VP of government affairs, Ethan Lane touted Rollins’ “history of fighting for Main Street and Rural America. America’s cattle producers need a secretary of agriculture who will protect family farms and ranches, roll back crushing regulations, and stand up for rural values.” 

American Farm Bureau president Zippy Duvall weighed in, noting the “good relationship” Rollins has with the Texas Farm Bureau: “We hope to build on that. We’re encouraged by her statement that she’d ‘fight for America’s farmers and our nation’s agricultural communities.’ Effective leadership at USDA is more important than ever as farmers and ranchers face a struggling agricultural economy.” 

Trump’s cabinet nominations are now complete and require confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

Check out some other interesting perspectives on the next USDA Secretary, pending Senate confirmation.

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‘Stop feeding us lies’ say protesters as Dietary Guidelines Committee unbelievably doubles down against animal fat, protein

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Dietary Guidelines have most negatively impacted children and youth.

Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee holds final meeting. Draft recommendations include: Reductions in total protein; Less protein from animals, more from plants; Dairy emphasis still low-fat, non-fat; Implementation recommendations include food supply leverage

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 25, 2024

WASHINGTON, D.C. – This week is National School Lunch Week, and on Oct. 22 while USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack kicked off the so-called “largest federal-led summit in support of healthy school meals” in Las Vegas, the 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) met publicly by zoom to gamble away the nutrients children need for the development of their brains, bodies and long-term health.

This was the seventh and final meeting of the DGAC after 22 months of subcommittee meetings and periodic full committee meetings, yielding a draft “scientific report” that is increasingly vegetarian.

Its recommendations to USDA and HHS are to develop 2025-30 Guidelines that significantly decrease the role of nutrient dense animal foods, even though they spent the first hour of the 12-hour, two-day virtual meeting puzzling over how to solve the nutrient deficiencies in their analysis.

The recommendations merge the three current DGA patterns (Vegetarian, Mediterranean and Healthy U.S.) into one dietary pattern with a draft name of “Healthy Flex U.S. Diet.” The flexibility part, according to the DGAC discussion, is the ‘how much’ and ‘how to’, which relies on ‘food pattern modeling’ and more specific strategies on how to replace animal based foods with plant based foods. 

The DGAC aims to improve its poor performance on the under-consumed nutrients by “including more nutrient-dense plant-based meal and dietary recommendation options” in its advice for 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines. 

The draft advice aims to continue to “emphasize consumption of low-fat or non-fat dairy and unsaturated fats; limit consumption of red or processed meats and foods high in saturated fat; and limit foods like sweetened beverages.”

Some committee members raised the concern that further addressing one problem (fat, salt, and sugar) leads to other problems in other areas (under-consumption of key nutrients, over-consumption of carbohydrates, and impacts on metabolic health). 

In fact, a week before the DGAC met, the first ever Change the Dietary Guidelines protest drew hundreds of people to the nation’s capitol — with Nina Teicholz, author of Big Fat Surprise, as emcee. It was organized by Metabolic Revolution with the mission of asking the Administration to “STOP FEEDING US LIES.”

Nutrition Coalition photo

Meanwhile, in the DGAC meeting, at least one member at the end of the first day noted how animal foods, specifically mentioning dairy, have all of these essential nutrients and that the bioavailability of the nutrients is important.

This didn’t make much difference. On the question of saturated fat restrictions, the 2025-30 DGAC doubled-down. These restrictions began with the first edition in 1980, and the quantitative recommendation of “limit saturated fat intake to less than 10% of calories per day starting at age 2 and replacing it with unsaturated fat, particularly poly-unsaturated” began in 2005.

The Committee’s biggest justification was that, “This has been confirmed by several previous DGACs based on the relationship between saturated fat intake and cardiovascular disease risk.” Basically saying it has been previously decided, and “we’re sticking with it.” Essentially, all evidence to the contrary was again ignored.

The Committee stated that only 1 in 5 Americans implement this limitation; so, food replacement strategies, cultural diet pathways, and diet simulations were recommended to show how to get more nutrient density from plant sources. Pre-packaged and pre-portioned implementation strategies and plated combinations of plant-based meals are suggested as ways to ensure nutrients without the fat.

This high-level academic exercise means very little to everyday Americans making choices about food, but it could fundamentally change what is available to choose from — if the “systems science, implementation science, and behavioral science” the DGAC is also recommending pushes diets even more toward highly processed, pre-packaged, pre-portioned options designed by global food giants.

Bottomline: the DGAC will recommend to the USDA and HHS to further reduce animal-based protein consumption and to further increase plant-sourced consumption in the 2025-30 Guidelines, while continuing to limit dairy to non-fat and low-fat options.

For dairy, the DGAC is also recommending that USDA update nutrition composition and dairy reference guides to reflect what they say are ‘improved’ plant-milks, and to use ‘diet simulators’ to show Americans how to be more ‘flexible’ in replacing animal foods with plant foods.

The DGAC also changed the wording of its 2025-30 mission to “reduce the focus on chronic disease risk reduction, to instead focus more on promoting growth and development and improving the healthspan.”

These are key takeaways despite the Committee spending the first hour of the first day stupefied by the analysis showing — uniformly across all socio-economic and cultural demographics — children ages 5-19 had the nutritionally poorest diets in terms of under-consuming key nutrients at this most critical lifestage.

Even when they picked up their Health Equity Lens to look at the data, it was uniformly bad.

The DGAC could not understand why the healthy eating index showed such uniformly poor performance in the under-consumption of key nutrients, especially among children ages 5 to 19 across all populations. (Simple. It’s because the anti-fat DGAs are enforced at school meals twice a day, five days a week, most of the year for this life stage. Kids do not get to choose; adults do.) Oct. 21 screenshot DGAC meeting 

Their interpretation? I will paraphrase: Parents need help understanding how to feed their children.

My interpretation? The Dietary Guidelines are, themselves, the problem because they are used rigidly to formulate the meals that the age 5 to 19 lifestage (kids) are presented with twice a day, five days a week, nine to 12 months of the year – at school! The body will keep snacking until it gets the nutrients it seeks. 

“Obesity is a major public health issue, impacting 36% of children ages 2 through 19 years and 41% of adults ages 20 and older,” according to the DGAC.

However, by the end of the two days, the DGAC showed it would stay on the anti-fat path and give USDA and HHS the “expert” advice to double-down on saturated fat restrictions that have prevailed over the years while Americans become less healthy, more obese, with more chronic disease, at ever younger ages. Do they not wonder why this was not the situation pre-Guidelines? So much valuable research on saturated fat and health was again left off the table.

One of many draft advice slides for 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines emphasizing non-fat and low-fat dairy and unsaturated fats; addressing nutrient density by increasing plant-based meal options and decreasing animal-based. Oct. 21 DGAC meeting 

Impacts of the DGAC draft report on Dairy:

1) Dairy’s ‘place’ in the diet remains somewhat intact, but the committee advises things like not referring to soy milk as an “alternative” because it is part of the dairy grouping. They also are questioning if ‘Dairy’ is the right term for the Dairy group. The DGAC also will advise USDA to update nutrient composition and daily reference amounts to reflect the current state of nutrition art in “plant-milks” and to use diet simulations to show Americans how to be more flexible in replacing animal-based with plant-based.

2) Nonfat and low-fat dairy will continue to be the recommendation (3 milk cup equivalents), although they mentioned that there was not enough evidence to make this a strong conclusion for ages 2 through 5. Perhaps this leaves a door open for daycares and WIC to expand to 2% and whole fat milk up to age 5 instead of the current age 2, but schoolchildren are still out of luck. Dairy fat and butter were mentioned as being consumed mostly in processed foods.

3) The Protein category has been flipped on its lid. The DGAC moved beans, peas and lentils from the vegetable category to the protein category and increased the daily quantities for beans, peas, lentils, seeds, soy, nuts, and fish, while reducing the allowance for meat, poultry and eggs. In fact, they will represent this visually by listing first in the protein category the plant sources, followed by fish, then eggs, then poultry, and lastly, red meat. The DGAC pointed to the dairy group as a source of protein that is not in the protein group, so protein level importance in plant-based comparisons can be reduced. (Several Committee members indicated their belief that Americans consume too much protein, so they wanted to show these crossovers differently.)

4) The additional considerations chapter is of particular concern for the future, advising USDA and HHS to: a) Encourage shifts to nutrient-dense plant-based meals; b) Put stricter limits on foods and beverages high in added sugars, sodium, and saturated fat; c) Use sugar limitations to exclude foods from the dietary pattern (with implications for flavored milk and dairy products); d) Make sodium reduction targets mandatory not voluntary (may impact the cheesemaking process for schools and other institutional feeding); e) Avoid referring to soy milk as “alternative”; Research name change for Protein group and determine if ‘Dairy’ is the right term for the Dairy group.

This draft report ends the DGAC’s work. In the coming days, it will be edited to reflect the discussion for submission as final recommendations to USDA and HHS.

A joint team of staff from both Departments will prepare this DGAC Scientific Report for posting at DietaryGuidelines.gov, along with data analysis, food pattern modeling and other supplemental documents. 

USDA and HHS will then open a new public comment period.

In 2025, the Secretaries of USDA and HHS (whoever they end up being), along with their joint team, will review the DGAC scientific report and the public comments to develop the actual 2025-30 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Expect these DGAs to continue most negatively impacting America’s schoolchildren and elderly in senior centers where meals must follow them.

However, it will have some impact on all of us if the Departments use the DGAC recommendation to implement food system science at the food supply level. We can already see what happens to choices for consumers and markets for farmers when the middlemen decide what can be put on grocery store shelves or in the dairy or meat case.

Not only did we not see a serious effort to address the need for more nutrient dense foods in the dietary pattern, the new pattern will double-down against saturated fat, along with salt and added sugar, and erode protein levels, while continuing to search for the missing nutrition profile of its increasingly vegetarian recommendations. 

None of this passes the smell test, and likely not the taste test. Kids eat food not data. Nutrients must pass the tongue to reach the belly. Look for more on that in terms of action next week from the Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee and 97 Milk.

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Additional information:

In its report, The Nutrition Coalition notes: “The collective shift toward emphasizing more plant-based foods has lowered the quality and quantity of protein in our diets. It is time to pause and question whether these changes are endangering health in the U.S., especially among children and the elderly. Still, with plant-based advocates dominating the public comments, plant-based industries and interests lobbying the USDA, and plant-based proponents on the expert committee itself, we may see further reductions of this important macronutrient in the 2025 Dietary Guidelines.”

Nina Teicholz, Ph.D. explains that these draft recommendations “fly in the face of our knowledge that plant proteins are of lower quality than animal proteins. With the exception of soy, all plant proteins lack all the necessary amino acids to make muscle tissue (as well as perform other critical functions in the human body). Reducing the total amount of protein and replacing animal proteins with plant proteins are both harmful changes. These alterations will mean that anyone receiving USDA-funded meals, such as kids consuming school lunches, the women and infant children on the WIC program, and the elderly will receive fewer complete proteins. Also, reductions in meat, dairy and eggs are sure to exacerbate nutritional deficiencies in the guidelines, which currently fail to meet basic targets iron, vitamin D, vitamin E, choline, and folate. The Dietary Guidelines are already deficient in complete proteins. The erosion of protein in the guidelines has been happening for decades, as we wrote about in this post.”

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There is NO basis for two Class I movers in FMMO recommended decision!

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: Who’s the wizard behind the curtain on USDA’s last-minute milk pricing surprise, the splitting of the Class I baby to favor ESL? Vilsack, of course, with a little help from his checkoff cronies at Midwest Dairy and DMI — masquerading as ‘dairy farmers.’

By Sherry Bunting

USDA’s recommended decision on Federal Milk Marketing Order Class I (fluid milk) formulas brought a big surprise getting very little attention. That surprise: “splitting the Class I baby” and adding what constitutes a “fifth Class” of milk — TWO Class I movers announced each month.

ZERO proposals to divide Class I into a two-mover system were aired at the national hearing. Even USDA’s analysis shows the two movers would differ by as much as $1 apart — or more — in any given month.

The hearing record is woefully inadequate, indeed completely void of testimony for a second Class I mover. No proposal. No evidence. No testimony. No analysis. No parameters. No definition.

What does this surprise two-mover decision mean? 

Fresh, conventionally processed (HTST) milk would go back to being priced by the prior method, using the higher of the Class III or IV advance pricing factors to determine the Class I skim milk base price portion of the mover. 

On the other hand, milk used to make extended shelf life (ESL) fluid milk products, defined only as “good for 60 days or more,” would continue to be priced using the average of these two pricing factors, plus-or-minus a rolling adjuster of the difference between the higher-of and average-of for 24 months, with a 12-month lag.

Confused yet? 

The industry is calling this surprise two-mover twist ‘innovative’ and ‘creative’, even ‘brilliant.’ But let’s hold the horses a moment. 

With two movers, fluid milk costs could be different for plants in the same location based on shelf life. Could processors change the label to move between the movers and pay whichever mover was lower? Who knows? There is no clear definition for the new class, and the parameters to qualify are non-existent.

ESL processors will know the rolling adjuster 12 months in advance, due to the “lag.” They will know the two advance-priced movers a month in advance. They will have it charted in an algorithm no doubt, and make decisions accordingly.

Dairy farmers, on the other hand, will find out how their milk was used and priced two weeks after all their milk for the month was trucked off the farm. If the two-price Class I system becomes law, dairy producers’ milk checks will be even less transparent than they are now!

Not only does the USDA hearing record and decision fail to clearly define ESL, the industry doesn’t even have an exact and generally-accepted definition or standard for ESL.

ESL is both a loose and specific term.

Generally speaking, ESL is a term covering a broad range of products — ranging from UHT (ultra high temperature) or ultra pasteurization, aseptic packaging, to the inclusion of a process that combines microfiltration, skim separation, and indirect heating (in stages). These processes yield what is more specifically referred to as ESL fresh milk with a longer shelf life in refrigeration, but is not shelf-stable.

What’s at the root here?

Dairy checkoff personnel have openly identified ESL — especially shelf stable aseptically packaged milk — as its “new milk beverage platform.” Dairy farmers’ promotion funds are being used to research and promote ESL milk, as well as studying and showing how consumers can be “taught” to accept it.

For the past few years, the four research centers supported by the checkoff have been drilling into milk’s elements to sift, sort, and test different combinations to reinvent milk as new beverages.

In 2023, North Carolina State researcher Dr. MaryAnne Drake —speaking at the 2023 Georgia Dairy Conference — talked about this “new milk beverage platform. We are after a shelf-stable milk that tastes great and meets our consumer’s sensory needs and our industry’s sustainability needs,” she said.

Bingo. Dairy checkoff funds for ESL are being driven by the net-zero sustainability targets. And now USDA’s federal milk order changes are proposing to lower dairy farmers’ Class I income and/or competitively favor, and in a way subsidize, ESL processors over fresh HTST fluid milk processors. Follow the money.

Dr. Michael Dykes of IDFA, at the Georgia Dairy Conference in January 2024, told dairy producers that “this is the direction we (processors) are moving… to get to some economies of scale and bring margin back to the business.” He said the planned new fluid milk processing capacity investments are largely ultra-filtered, aseptic, and ESL — 10 of the 11 new fluid plants on the IDFA map he displayed are ESL. Some will also make ultrafiltered milk and plant-based beverages too.

The linchpin to regional dairy systems and markets for milk from farms that fit USDA’s description of small businesses is the processing of fresh, conventionally pasteurized (HTST) fluid milk.

Meanwhile, dairy checkoff overseers, in cahoots with processors, are making big bets that consumers will embrace the obvious conversion underway to the consolidating shelf stable ESL milk, emboldened by the average-of pricing that has failed farmers miserably over the past five years and is now part of the proposed two-price Class I system mysteriously added to the USDA recommended decision when a two-price Class I system was never noticed as part of the hearing scope.

In the recommended decision, USDA notes that ESL currently represents 8 to 10% of total fluid milk sales but does not present the full picture of how the industry began aggressively converting to ESL since 2019 when Class I average-of was implemented. More of these accelerated investments will become operational in 2024-26.

Before we know it, the industry will have converted to ESL, and dairy farmers will once again experience disorderly marketing, depooling, and the basis risk of the mysterious average-of mover.

Dairy farmers have seen this movie before. 

In 2018, the average-of method — which changed how the Class I base was calculated — was portrayed by National Milk and the IDFA as “revenue neutral.” But at the recent national milk order hearing, testimony revealed that farmers experienced Class I revenue losses totaling nearly $1.25 billion from May 2019 through July 2024… and other impacts. 

Disorderly markets via the ‘average-of’ continue to result in losses and disrupt performance of risk management tools that fail to protect farmers against the intervals of extreme basis risk.

Proponents say the proposed rolling 36-to-13-month ESL adjuster on the second mover in USDA’s decision provides compensation to farmers for the difference between average-of and higher-of. However, that occurs gradually — over time — with a lagged interval. If tight milk supplies boost commodity prices and drive up all classes of milk, then dairy farmers’ incomes will at least partially lag years behind real-time markets!

ESL processors like Nestle and fairlife testified that the average-of method over the past five years allowed them to use Class III and IV hedges on the CME to offer flat 9- to-12-month pricing to wholesale customers and increase their sales. Nice to know the big corporations made money on that inequitable Class I pricing system.

Would a two-mover system ultimately reduce farmers’ access to milk markets in some regions and diminish the food security of those consumers? Watch the impact of a new, unregulated ESL plant now being built in Idaho!

Many legitimate questions lack answers

Milk is commonly prized as the freshest, least processed, most regionally local food at the supermarket. Will the USDA recommended decision accelerate consolidation and a reduction in fresh fluid milk availability for consumers?

Has USDA considered the purpose of the FMMO system is to promote orderly marketing and the adequate supply of fresh fluid milk? Will consumers accept the taste of the not-so-fresh ESL, or migrate faster to other beverages if fresh fluid milk is less available to them?

How will the two-mover system impact dairy farms located outside of the industry’s very specific identified growth centers? 

Will this perpetuate the wide divergence between Classes III and IV that has been an issue since 2019, further punishing dairy farmers with disorderly marketing and opportunistic depooling?

Who knows? The hearing failed to define, examine, or obtain evidence on any such questions… or any other questions that the hearing process is meant to be open to because this decision falls outside of the hearing scope!

Vilsack strikes again?

This proposal — a price break favoring ESL milk — fits the climate and export goals set forth by Ag-Secretary-then-DMI-executive-then-Secretary-again, Tom Vilsack. The pathway to rapidly consolidate the dairy industry to meet those goals is to tilt the table against fresh fluid milk. This is something Vilsack already put a big dent in by removing whole milk from schools.

It’s like one well respected veterinarian in the industry observed recently in conversation: “Someone decided: Thou shalt drink low-fat milk and like it.”

That “someone” is apparently equally convinced that the industry shall move to ESL and aseptic milk processing… while using dairy farmers’ checkoff funds to figure out how to get consumers to like that too.

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‘Make allowance’ among hot topics ahead of producer vote on USDA’s proposed milk pricing changes

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35 dairy farmers, industry representatives, and farm media attended “Winners and Losers: a discussion about USDA’s proposed milk pricing reforms,” hosted by the American Dairy Coalition during the 57th World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin October 3rd.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, October 11, 2024

MADISON, Wis. – “I’m in Wisconsin, and on the graph (below) it looks like producers in Order 30 are having to decide between less money with an Order or even less money without an Order. Am I wrong and is there a silver lining?”

That was the crux of the question one dairywoman asked during the American Dairy Coalition’s (ADC) ‘Winners and Losers’ seminar and press conference Oct. 3 at World Dairy Expo. Over 35 farmers, industry representatives, and media professionals gathered to hear insights about USDA’s recommended decision on changes to Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) price formulas.

American Farm Bureau economist Danny Munch was the invited presenter, followed by time for questions, moderated by Kim Bremmer of Ag Inspirations, and opportunities for networking and farmer-to-media connections during the remainder of the two hours.

Dairy farmers attending ADC’s press conference gave interviews after the discussion on USDA’s proposed milk pricing changes.

At issue was the impact on FMMOs with more cheese and less fluid milk, that would experience the negative impacts of a proposed hike in processor make allowances without the positive buffer of higher Class I location differentials.

Bremmer said over 126 individuals and organizations provided comments to USDA. The comment period ended Sept. 13. 

During his visit to Expo on Oct. 4, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack said USDA would issue a final decision in mid-November. Also on Oct. 4, USDA held a webinar explaining the producer referendum expected in January. (Look for more specifics in a future Farmshine, and check out the Farm Bureau recap here)

The short answers to the above question appear to be yes, yes, and yes. With an Order, producers in some regions will see lower FMMO blend prices. Without an Order, they would lose minimum prices altogether and other important FMMO functions.

The silver lining? Munch pointed to better competition currently for milk, and he sees opportunity for milk in the future as consumers focus on protein.

New to the discussion was make allowance data compiled by AFBF for its official comment at the Federal Register showing the average plant size of processors participating voluntarily in the Stephenson Survey relative to the average plant size of processors reporting to the NASS Dairy Product Manufacturing Survey (below)

The average size and volume of the plants in the voluntary cost of processing survey is 5 to 20 times smaller than the size and volume of plants reporting to USDA on price and production. This is further evidence that mandatory surveys are the only fair way to examine and set make allowance levels.

ADC reports that farmers have called with questions and concerns about the FMMO changes they will vote on. Part of ADC’s mission is to inform dairy farmers and help them understand factors like this that affect their businesses, said Bremmer.

For example, it’s helpful for farmers to realize that current make allowances equate to $2.17 to $3.17 per hundredweight in deductions already in the pricing formulas to cover the cost of converting milk to butter, cheddar cheese, nonfat dry milk, and dry whey. 

The proposed new make allowances add 70 cents to $1.00, depending on class utilization, bringing the total deduction to about $2.89 to $4.07 per hundredweight, maybe more.

The splitting of Class I into a two-mover pricing system is also causing discontent and concern. On the one hand, USDA would restore the ‘higher-of’ method for conventionally pasteurized fluid milk but use an ‘average-of’ method with a rolling and delayed adjuster for the extended shelf life (ESL) fluid milk products. This new milk class was not vetted nor defined during the hearing.

Also of concern is the delay in implementing positive updates to milk composition standards that have not been updated since Order Reform in 2000.

USDA’s recommended decision applies to all 11 FMMOs nationally but will be voted on by eligible (pooled) producers in each Order, individually.

A two-thirds ‘yes’ vote within each individual Order continues that Order with the changes. If the two-thirds threshold is not met by either producer numbers or volume in an Order, then the result is termination of that Order. 

Producers do not have the option of voting separately on the five pieces of the USDA decision, nor do they have the option of voting to keep the FMMO pricing formulas as they are currently.

Economists with National Milk Producers Federation have stated previously that 65 to 70% of the U.S. milk supply is marketed through cooperatives that tend to bloc vote for their producers, but this percentage can vary on an individual Order basis.

USDA determines voting eligibility, based on whether milk was pooled in the reference period selected by each Market Administrator. 

“When we get down the road to the vote, and if we vote ‘no,’ that will dissolve the Order, right?” asked one dairy farmer. “What opportunity does any geography have to reorganize a new Order to fit what works for them?”

Munch said producers could start a process to create a new Order, but it would still be required to use the same price formula rules because these will apply to ALL Orders uniformly. In contrast, he noted that USDA leaves pooling and depooling rules to be decided individually by each Order.

One member of the media pressed Munch to speculate on what happens if a western Order votes no, but an eastern Order votes yes?

“People always want me to speculate on what happens if California or the Upper Midwest vote out their Order(s). What we’ve seen in the past in unregulated areas, or areas with state orders — they still base a lot of their pricing on the nearby Federal Order system,” he responded.

“If we remove more milk out of the Federal Order system, does that system then play less of a role in pricing milk, and does that unregulated market start to dictate and suck milk out of the regulated areas, if you’ve taken out some of the large milk production states? That’s just some speculation, something to think about in the long term,” he said.

On a more immediate basis, Munch said that if an Order is terminated by this vote, “farmers lose protections like timely payments and component verifications, and the minimum prices. You could end up with a patchwork.”

He pointed out that USDA did not raise make allowances by the full amount requested by processors, but also did not go with the more modest increases requested by the cooperatives.

In their post-hearing comments, processors voiced great unhappiness with the decision, he said, because they didn’t get the multi-year increases to even higher levels.

“We don’t blame USDA for trying to come up with a middle ground… we just don’t have the data. The way hearing processes work is they collect this data brought by stakeholders and try to come up with a compromise that works for everybody,” Munch explained. “Our argument is that the data may not reflect market conditions, and we want to make sure that it does. We can’t get that assurance until there’s an audited, mandatory survey.”

As a standalone piece, AFBF estimates that USDA’s proposed increase in make allowances would remove an additional $1.25 billion annually from producer pool revenue, nationwide, based on past pooling data. However, USDA proposes a one-year delay in implementing the milk composition updates that would contribute $200 million annually in producer pool revenue nationwide.

Munch sees the 12-month delay in implementing the milk composition standards and the splitting of the Class I mover with an ESL adjuster as two things that appear to be “thrown in there,” with a lot of groups voicing discontent and confusion.

When asked by a reporter if the add-ons to Class I will create consumer resistance to what could be a 25-cents-per-gallon increase in retail fluid milk prices, Munch cited the hearing record where economists testified to the relative inelasticity of fluid milk demand.

He also sees great opportunity for milk: “When I go to the gym, I used to see no one drinking milk. Now I see tons of people drinking milk, protein shakes, and other things, and it’s not plant-based products. I think milk can take advantage of marketing the protein benefits that people in my generation are looking for and are willing to pay for.”

Munch was asked if AFBF will recommend how its dairy members should vote.

“We will not make that recommendation. We take positions based on our policy, which includes opposing any make allowance updates until we have mandatory cost of processing surveys, and other aspects related to our policy book,” he replied. “It’s up to our members to make those voting decisions, and there is a regionality to this, so we don’t get involved at that level.”

Florida producers, for example, “will be okay with the new rules” because the over 80% Class I utilization brings with it higher location differentials. The Upper Midwest, on the other hand, has been at roughly 5% Class I and 93% Class III, so there is very little benefit from the Class I changes, but those producers are subjected to the highest make allowance deductions for Class III products, which is 95% of their blend price.

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Editorial: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could unite the country with whole milk?”

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine July 26, 2024

‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could unite the country with whole milk?”

Those words were messaged to me by a friend and colleague a year ago, right after the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act had passed the House Education Committee in bipartisan fashion before the overwhelming passage on the House floor Dec. 13, 2023 and before Senate Ag Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) blocked it the next day, Dec. 14, 2023.

This was my first thought, when former President Donald Trump announced Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate in the Republican campaign. (Vance is an early cosponsor of S. 1957, the Senate’s whole milk bill.)

Like others, I’ve been involved in the effort to bring the choice of whole milk back to schools for more than a decade. It’s about natural, simple goodness — to simply strip away the federal ban and allow hungry, learning children to be nourished by milk they will love. 

Looking back at the years of this long fight, I realize that if it’s so painstakingly hard to get something so simple and so right accomplished for America’s children and farmers, we’ve got problems in this country.

With President Joe Biden now withdrawing from the campaign for a second term, and Vice President Kamala Harris as presumptive nominee launching her campaign this week in the Dairyland State, I’m reminded of where she stands on such things.

Harris is no friend to livestock agriculture. She was an original cosponsor of the Senate version of “The Green New Deal.” She has strong positions on climate change that may lead to harsher rules on methane emissions and water consumption in the dairy industry, while perhaps promoting methane digesters, which are not an equitable nor necessary solution. Cows are NOT the problem!

Some in the dairy industry are on record stating that this would be good for dairy because the DMI Net Zero goals fall in-line and tout some of the same objectives. But no matter how you slice and dice all the fancy offsets, insets, innovations, grants, projects and the billions of dollars, the bottom line leaves cattle holding the bag. 

Cattle are in the crosshairs of a very long game set to control land, food and people.

Harris has already indicated she would use the Dietary Guidelines to reduce red meat consumption on the basis of this erroneous climate impact claim about cattle that we are all being brainwashed to quite literally buy into.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, in a CNN town hall, she was specifically asked: “Would you support changing the Dietary Guidelines to reduce red meat specifically to reduce emissions?”

“Yes, I would,” Harris replied, with a burst of laughter.

It’s not funny.

Earlier, she had said she “enjoys a cheeseburger from time to time,” but the balance to be struck is “what government can and should do around creating incentives, and then banning certain behaviors… that we will eat in a healthy way, and that we will be educated about the effect of our eating habits on our environment. We have to do a much better job at that, and the government has to do a much better job at that.”

Read those words again: “creating incentives and then banning certain behaviors.” In plain English, that means dangling the carrot and then showing us the stick.

Harris joins Senators like Ag Chair Stabenow, as well as Bob Casey from Pennsylvania, as card-carrying members of perennial Ag Secretary Vilsack’s food and climate police.

Not only is Ag Chair Stabenow blocking the whole milk bill in her Committee, she is dragging her feet on the critical farm bill. 

As President Biden’s approval ratings fell, there were indications she would bring her side of the aisle to the table to negotiate a compromise to get the farm bill done this year.

Now that Biden has withdrawn from the race, and the pundits, media, and party organizers are breathless with excitement over Harris as presumptive nominee, it appears that the farm bill negotiations between the Committee-passed House version, the Republican Senate version and the Democrat Senate version have fallen apart.

House Ag Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) has called upon his colleagues to get to the table and do the work because a perfect storm is brewing in Rural America as net farm income is forecast to fall by 27% this year on top of the 19% decline last year. 

Meanwhile, there is political upheaval everywhere we look. Seeing Vance picked as Trump’s running mate and knowing he was among the early cosponsors of Senate Bill 1957 – The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act – offers some hope.

That bill — in true bipartisan spirit — was introduced in the U.S.Senate in June 2023 by Senator Dr. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) with prime cosponsors Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Fetterman (D-Penna.), Mike Crapo and James Risch (R-Idaho), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Angus King (I-Maine), and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.). The bill eventually earned cosponsorship from other Senators, including the influential Democrat from Minnesota, Amy Klobuchar.

Vance signed on as cosponsor on December 14, 2023, one day after the U.S. House of Representatives had passed their version of the bill by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of 330 to 99.

The Senate bill 1957 is identical to the successful House whole milk bill H.R. 1147, which was authored by Pennsylvania’s own Representative GT Thompson.

GT is a man of courage, conviction, compassion, of humility and humanity. I’ve heard him say more than once: “God gave us two ears and only one mouth for a reason.”

He is a determined man, doing the work. He included whole milk bill in the House Committee-passed farm bill. He’s standing firm on his pledge to put the farm back in the farm bill. He is concerned about the financial crisis in agriculture on the horizon, and held a hearing July 23 with witnesses from agriculture and banking giving stark warnings.

Even though whole milk choice in schools seems like a minor issue in the grand scheme of things today, it is really a linchpin. If we could just get something with broad bipartisan support accomplished, this could lead to other steps on common ground. 

Cows are not the climate problem. Cows are a solution. Cows are part of a carbon cycle, they don’t take carbon out of the ground and put new carbon into the air. 

Carbon is essential to life. It seems that those seeking full control of land, food, and people, are starting with carbon. 

As the whole milk choice remains hung up in the Senate, let’s pause to think about how ridiculous it is that we adults get to choose, but our growing children do not. For them, whole milk is banned at two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year at school. (The federal government, via USDA school lunch rules, only allows fat-free and 1% milk to be offered with the meal or even a la carte.)

Maybe the Harris ticket would like to ban food choice behaviors for adults as well.

We have Republicans and Democrats supporting whole milk choice in schools. Both parties say they care about our nation’s farmers and ranchers who feed us and are the backbone of our national security.

Let’s take that and run with it.

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While fakes campaign to BE ‘milk’, dairy checkoff aims to REINVENT milk. New ‘milk beverage platform’ deemed ultrafiltered, ESL, shelf-stable

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As new milk beverage platform is developed, it sounds to me like people want the many attributes fresh whole unfooled-around-with fluid milk already delivers. It checks all the boxes! Maybe children just need to be allowed to have whole milk at school and daycare where they eat most of their meals, and maybe new generations of adults need the education about why and how the dairy protein and natural nutrition in real milk beat the imposters, hands down.

By Sherry Bunting, republished from March 2023 editions of Farmshine

SAVANNAH, Ga. — Dairy checkoff-funded researchers say a new milk beverage platform is being developed to provide “the keys to the kingdom.”

Their consumer studies show people want clean labels, and at the same time they want more attributes. On the one hand, they want energy and protein. On yet anotherhand, they want indulgent creaminess. 

Consumers also want flavor, but they want less sugar. They want sweeteners, but not artificial sweeteners. They want thickness without the thickeners. They do not want gums or gels, but they are okay with fibers and starches. 

Some consumers want higher protein products. Others want everyday nutrition that is reasonably priced. 

These are some of the highlights that were shared back in January 2023 during the Georgia Dairy Conference in Savannah. There, Dr. MaryAnne Drake, professor of food science at North Carolina State University and director of the Southeast Dairy Foods Research Center talked about the fluid milk innovation work funded through DMI.

The ‘new milk beverage platform’ leverages different processing applications for flavor and functionality around dairy protein, based on global protein trends in a rapidly growing nutritional drink market.

ESL shelf-stable milk: key to kingdom?

“We are after a shelf-stable milk that tastes great and meets our consumer’s sensory needs and our industry’s sustainability needs,” said Drake about the work of the four university research centers, including North Carolina State and Cornell, that are drilling into milk’s elements to sift, sort, and test different combinations, as part of the checkoff-funded Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, under the DMI umbrella.

Through processes like membrane technology, ultrafiltration, and aseptic packaging, the physical, nutritional and sensory elements of milk are being isolated at a molecular level to create beverages that aim to deliver this broad list of what consumers say they are looking for. 

At the same time, researchers are using interpretive surveys to understand how consumer desires actually translate into purchases, and then work with processors to build relationships with retailers to get these new beverage products into stores.

Reinventing milk

What does all of this mean? Reinventing milk by focusing on the domains in which real milk has a clear advantage for consumers among so many plant-based and now cell-based options. 

For example, said Drake: “Consumers want to know from a credible source what the immune-boosting elements are in milk, not what we have added. They tell us they want to know the science. That’s new.” 

Drake explained that the findings from their interpretive surveys represent a huge and divergent set of innovations to sort through and capitalize on as part of a new strategy.

“Consumers don’t see the perceived value of animal protein vs. plant protein, so we had them graph what they want and don’t want, what they know and don’t know,” she said, adding that consumers gave the slight edge to plant protein over dairy protein. They rated the top three protein categories as plant protein, whey protein, and milk protein — in that order. (A large percentage believed whey protein is plant protein.)

As their familiarity with the differences between plant and animal protein increased, their liking of dairy protein increased, the researchers learned.

In other words, consumers do not know the science about the nutritional differences between plant and animal protein, and if they knew the differences, they would rank milk protein as number one. 

Clearly, this is a failure in consumer education and messaging. Isn’t that the domain of the dairy checkoff?

New strategy

Drake indicated that educating consumers about dairy protein as a ‘complete protein’ is one thing that can help. However, she said, the functionality around dairy protein is the innovation strategy that is being pursued by the industry.

“The number one label claim consumers are looking for in a protein beverage is ‘naturally sweetened.’ We own that, and this is where we can deliver,” Drake declared.

“We own protein functionality. We understand the process parameters that impact flavor and functionality, and we can leverage this over plant proteins on this platform,” she said.

Bottom line: The surveys and flavor panels showed that consumers want “desirable flavor, texture and appearance. They want a protein drink that is nutritious, naturally sweetened, and has a clean label with simple ingredients,” said Drake. 

“They also want education, messaging and positioning, and they are looking at sustainability,” she added.

“We are working on what does clean label mean? It’s not what we think it is,” Drake reported. “It’s costing us sales if what they actually want is not on the shelf. We have the opportunity to deliver what consumers still want. We just have to find those things they want — that we have — and be more strategic in how we deliver them.”

Food technology and engineering was a big part of the picture painted for attendees that day.

Diversify processing

Producers were urged to challenge the status quo and to not just add processing, but to diversify it. They were also reminded that the 10 southeastern states had lost eight fluid milk plants in the previous roughly two-year period (2020-22).

During his annual market outlook that year, retired co-op executive Calvin Covington hit the nail on the head with this reminder, saying “that’s done some damage. The major challenge for milk markets in the Southeast is we need more of them,” he said. “A lot of the fluid milk products that are sold in the Southeast are not processed here. If we are going to have a viable dairy industry in the Southeast, we need growing and stable markets for milk produced in the Southeast.”

Covington also differentiated the trends for domestic and export demand, showing that both lagged their respective 5-year-average annual growth in 2022, with domestic demand growing by just 0.5%, while exports grew by 3.5%.

Keeping in mind as exports are expected to top 20% of U.S. milk production on a total solids basis in the next two years and fluid milk sales as a percentage of total milk production have fallen to just under 20%, seismic shifts are already occurring in the heavily fluid milk market of the Southeast.

Transformation brings investors

Geri Berdak, CEO of Dairy Alliance, the Southeast regional checkoff organization, talked about “creating a path forward” with objectives centered on driving milk volume, increasing dairy’s reputation and transforming dairy while building checkoff support.

She said transformation is necessary to “identify high-growth opportunities and stimulate outside investment, technology and innovation.”

The need for processing is big as plants are closing in response to declining fluid milk demand, leaving the the need for more diverse processing assets.

Exports drive innovation

“The biggest thing exports do is to drive value and innovation,” said Patti Smith, a food technology specialist and CEO of DairyAmerica, now wholly-owned by California Dairies Inc. (CDI) milk cooperative. Earlier in her career, Smith held a leadership position with Fonterra and has served at board and officer levels with IDFA and USDEC.

“Exports are a lot more than powder today. Our biggest item is still excess powder,” she said. “But we also export many other products — even UHT (ultra high temperature) and ESL (extended shelf life) fluid milk and cream.”

What Smith sees into the future are “opportunities for the right products and the right product configurations. We have the opportunities to capitalize on them and the technologies to grow them.”

Smith said the biggest benefit of exports to-date is to have a home for milk that grows the dairy industry without relying on core domestic demand for that growth, but that U.S. dairy processing infrastructure is not quite reflective of the new export era.

“We need to make our industry world renown, through a strategic plan that the whole industry will work on together, with digitized supply chains and infrastructure for growth that is reliable and can be consistently demonstrated, and that includes shipping,” said Smith, citing the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy as the nexus, where the industry’s “strategic plan” for global trade is being built.

Developing ‘new milk beverage platform’

Emanating from the DMI-founded and checkoff-funded Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy is the marketing and promotion arm of new product alliances and the National Dairy Research arm through several universities looking to essentially create a milk beverage platform by drilling into milk’s elements, sifting, sorting and testing different combinations.

Dr. Drake said the new milk beverage platform holds the “keys to the kingdom” as global protein trends were valued at $38.5 million in 2020 and projected to grow. Meanwhile, the nutritional drink markets are growing steadily, with 42% of consumers eating healthy as a higher priority since Covid, and the number of conversations about protein (95% positive) steadily flowing across social media platforms. 

Those keys, she said, are membrane technology, ultrafiltration, aseptic packaging and research exploring all of the physical, nutritional and sensory elements of milk at the molecular level to bottle up what consumers say they are looking for, while also gauging through interpretive surveys how this translates to purchases, and then working with processors to build relationships with retailers to get new products into stores.

Drake shared details about the roadmap to play to dairy’s strengths through nutrition, education, capitalizing on calming and immune benefits and using dairy protein functionality to limit added ingredients in beverages to satisfy the clean label trend.

She talked about how elements like fat, protein and lactose at different levels impact milk’s flavor and appearance: “We want to determine the impact of ultrafiltration levels for different concentrations of fat and protein for different sensory or physical experiences.”

She talked about ultrafiltration in conjunction with aseptic packaging for shelf-stable storage using an elaborate diagram of processes.

Bottomline, she said: “The chemistry of these (aseptic) milks is different.”

She described consumer flavor panels where shelf-stable and fresh fluid milk were served cold and compared. The flavor panels evaluated two different storage temperatures for the shelf-stable milk.

The North Carolina researchers worked with their Northeast Dairy Foods Research counterpart at Cornell and with Byrne Dairy, running grad students from North Carolina to Syracuse, New York when batches were available for study. (The Southeast and Northeast as well as Midwest and California Dairy Foods Research Centers all receive funding from checkoff and other sources.)

‘Training consumers’

“Consumer panels still liked the HTST (fresh fluid) milk best overall, but in 14-day and 6-month follow up, we found we can train them,” said Drake, reporting the two best storage temperature options for aseptic milk saw longer-term increase in acceptance.

HTST is the acronym for High Temperature Short Time pasteurization that is basically commodity fresh fluid milk vs. ‘value added’ UHT (ultra high temperature) and ESL (extended shelf life) as well as aseptically-packaged, which is milk processed for longer shelf life and then bottled in a special sterile process and package to last months without refrigeration, but will taste best served cold.

Schools are the gateway

“For 25 years, consumers have not liked aseptic milk,” said Drake, “but we are changing that. Consumers may not like it or want it, yet, but it is great for schools.”

She reported the practical applications to come up with “great tasting school lunch milk that contains no lactose (no natural sugar).” Another practical application is to  “determine the impact of storage temperature of 1% aseptic milk on physical and sensory properties.”

This partially checkoff-funded research is also working on “changing the chocolate milk formula to have zero sugar,” she said. “When we think about school milk, the question is how to get the sugar out of it. We want a chocolate milk that tastes great and new government standards on low- or no-added-sugars. Right now, chocolate milk has 8.5 grams of added sugar and 12 grams of natural sugar (lactose).”

In addition to ultrafiltration removing natural sugar, or lactose, they are exploring “non-nutritive” sweeteners like monk fruit and stevia. Additionally, they are looking at “lactose-hydrolized” to boost the flavor profile at much lower levels of sugars or other sweetener.

Whether talking about consumers or children, parents, and schools, the milk beverage platform is tricky “They want to know from a credible source what the immune-boosting elements are in milk, not what we have added. They tell us they want to know the science. That’s new.

“We have a huge and divergent set of innovations to sort through,” said Drake. 

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Thompson pushes effective, transformational farm bill. Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act included!

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Representative GT Thompson of Pennsylvania once told a group of farmers gathered for a 97 Milk meeting that he has gone by a lot of titles and been called a lot of things over the years, and while it’s an honor to be the Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, his favorite title is ‘Representative’ because, he said “that’s what we do. We are representing The People.” True to form, GT led the House 2023-24 farm bill process with representation in mind by making the bipartisan endeavor ‘tripartisan’ — going to great lengths to bring grassroots farmers into the process. One thing he heard repeatedly at the 85 listening sessions in 40 states was ‘bring whole milk choice back to schools,’ even though school meal rules fall under the childhood nutrition reauthorization led by the Education Committee, not the farm bill. But now he’s done that too. Bolstered by the overwhelmingly bipartisan 330 to 99 passage of H.R. 1147 on Dec. 13, 2023, he found a way to make Whole Milk for Healthy Kids part of his proposed farm bill that heads to House Ag Committee markup next week. He says he is intent on getting the whole milk legislation through the Senate blockade and “over the finish line.” File photo by Sherry Bunting

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, May 17, 2024

WASHINGTON – House Ag Committee Chairman Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson (R-Pa.) says the bipartisan farm bill has reached a milestone and holds the potential for being transformational.

The chairman’s mark, released ahead of committee markup set for May 23, demonstrates the listening that went on in his busy schedule traveling to 40 states and one territory for 85 listening sessions over the past two years.

“We are hopeful that the House Ag Committee markup of this chairman’s mark legislation helps feed the momentum to get this farm bill done,” said Chairman Thompson in a May 14 Farmshine phone interview.

There are important highlights here, including reforms to the Dietary Guidelines process for greater transparency and accountability with new checks and balances, as well as language to expand the reach, funding and impact of the dairy incentive and school meal programs by including full fat fluid milk, flavored and unflavored, as seen in H.R. 5099 and H.R. 1147 (Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act).

“I was able to work with Dr. Virginia Foxx (chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee), and they will be providing a waiver after we mark this bill up, so we will be able to include Whole Milk for Healthy Kids in the farm bill,” Thompson shared.

He has previously stressed that, “This is about our kids and the outdated and harmful demonization of milkfat.”

“When we get to conference (with the Senate), it could be an issue, but Whole Milk for Healthy Kids passed the House by a 330 vote. I am intent on getting this provision over the finish line. 

“It may be the most important thing we do out of many things in this farm bill for dairy farmers,” he said.

Other dairy subtitle provisions

The dairy subtitle includes language to return the Class I ‘mover’ price to the ‘higher of’ calculation instead of the ‘average plus 74 cents’ that was implemented in May 2019.

“We obviously recognize that USDA has now gone through an extensive hearing process, and will honor what USDA comes up with, which will supersede what we’re doing,” Thompson reported. “But it was the Ag Committees in the Congress through the 2018 farm bill that eliminated the ‘higher of’ language, which has been followed by significant unanticipated losses.”

Language has also been included to mandate biennial cost of processing surveys. This also appears in the Senate farm bill.

Processors making products used in Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) formulas would participate in processing cost surveys every two years. In addition to reporting costs for those products, the Dairy Pricing Opportunities Act language that is rolled into the farm bill proposal states that the cost and yield information for all products processed in the same facility be included. (Note: This would ensure accurate allocation of plant costs that apply just to the products that are actually used in the FMMO pricing formulas so that the costs to process other value-added products that are not included in FMMO pricing, but are made in the same plant, do not influence future ‘make allowance’ hearings.)

These cost surveys would be published for the purposes of informing the regulatory or administrative (hearing) process for the establishment of pricing rules (such as determining how to use that published information to set ‘make allowance’ levels that are embedded in FMMO pricing formulas).

The dairy subtitle also expands the Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) tier one cap on annual milk production history from 5 million pounds to 6 million pounds, similar to the Senate bill.

It also includes language for updating DMC production history and provides a 25% discount in premium costs for any producer signing up for all five years of DMC coverage.

“That’s quite a savings,” Thompson observed.

IRA funds included without ‘climate sideboards’

In the Conservation Title, the chairman’s mark brings Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) conservation funds into the farm bill baseline without the ‘climate sideboards’ and arbitrary measures that ride along in the Senate version.

“All conservation programs, as long as they are locally-led and voluntary, contribute to climate and carbon sequestration. What the IRA legislation did is make it overly prescriptive with a lot of practices we know are successful not being eligible for these conservation dollars.

“We believe that the principles of locally-led and voluntary are a huge part of what has made conservation programs so successful. Agriculture sequesters 6.1 gigatons of carbon annually, over 10% more than we emit,” said Thompson.

Timelines matter

There are a couple reasons timelines matter in getting this farm bill done. The IRA funding is one of them.

“Number one is the American farmer is struggling right now. The chairman’s mark, as we prepared it in the House Committee, will be of great service to them as producers of food, and to struggling families as consumers of food, quite frankly,” said Thompson.

“The other reason timelines matter is these IRA dollars. As the Secretary of Agriculture continues to push those dollars forward, the original $19 billion – between what he already spent and what the CBO projects he will not be able to spend – that number is now down to $14 billion,” Thompson explained. “That’s opportunity lost for the future, unless and until we pass and reauthorize the farm bill and roll those dollars into its baseline.”

Thompson continued, explaining that, “Every dollar in IRA conservation funds spent between now and the passage of the farm bill is a dollar lost to the baseline for the future. One of the flaws of the IRA is these conservation dollars expire in 2031. Whatever we bring into the farm bill – into the baseline – is there for perpetuity. It will be there for the 2050 and 2055 farm bills. That’s smart, and it’s good for agriculture and great for conservation.”

The Senate proposal also brings IRA conservation funds into the farm bill baseline, but puts climate requirements on these funds, especially in regard to methane.

Tripartisan effort produces nutrition cost-savings, not cuts

“My chairman’s mark is built on solid tripartisan input from Republicans and Democrats and the hardworking people of American agriculture,” Thompson affirmed. “The Senate proposal is a partisan proposal. They did not bring Senate Republicans to the table.”

In his May 10 open letter, Chairman Thompson stated that his door is always open.

“There exists a few, loud armchair critics that want to divide the Committee and break the process. A farm bill has long been an example of consensus, where both sides must take a step off the soapbox and have tough conversations,” he wrote. “The 2024 farm bill was written for these precarious times and is reflective of the diverse constituency and narrow margins of the 118th Congress. Each title takes into consideration the varying opinions of all who produce as much as those who consume. It is not one-sided, it does not favor a fringe agenda, and it certainly does no harm to the programs and policies that feed, fuel, and clothe our nation.”

Case in point, the CBO has scored the House farm bill chairman’s mark to save $28 to $29 billion in the Nutrition Title.

“Some would have you believe we are cutting $28 to $29 billion from feeding struggling families, but we are not,” Thompson declared. “There are no cuts to individual SNAP benefits in this bill. My Democratic colleagues say we are cutting by that much, but the CBO score on my proposal reflects cost savings from increased efficiencies, reduced fraud, and things that better meet the needs of families struggling in poverty.”

Justifiably proud of the intense work he and his committee have done on the nutrition programs lightning rod that makes up more than 80% of the farm bill baseline, Thompson said his proposal actually “creates a fire wall so that a future right-leaning administration would not be able to arbitrarily cut benefits either. It exercises our Article I prerogative on how we do market basket analysis, keeps the variables and the cost of living. These things are significant factors.”

His proposal also expands access to a couple populations not eligible for SNAP in the past, including families with adult children in school up to age 21 (not 18). In the past, their part-time jobs affected family eligibility.

Putting the farm back in the farm bill

The Commodities and Crop Insurance Titles also engaged input from farmers, farm groups and industry. On reference prices, Thompson said the Senate bill picks three crops and puts in a 5% increase for base acreage.

“In our proposal, we’ve worked with the stakeholders. We’ve done the math, the financial and risk analysis on what is needed.”

This includes a more commodity-specific update to reference prices and granting the Secretary of Agriculture authority to expand base acres.

“We have been committed to putting the farmer back into the farm bill commodities title,” he said.

This scratches the surface of what is included in the farm bill chairman’s mark. An overview and title by title summary are available at https://agriculture.house.gov/farmbill/

When asked about what other dairy topics could come up during markup, Thompson said he wouldn’t be surprised to see other amendments in committee.

“There are some labeling issues that are not in our purview or jurisdiction but come under the Energy and Commerce Committee. We could get the ball rolling, but we would need them to get on board for that to go forward,” he said.

Reflecting on the milestone this week, Thompson answered our question about what he’s most proud of to this point.

“The fact that this farm bill was built using the input of American farmers, ranchers, and foresters, and it reflects what their priorities are and what their needs are, and the fact that as I look at the chairman’s mark and all 12 titles according to the goal placed early on, two years ago as I started my leadership of this process: 

“This will be not only a highly effective farm bill for our producers, processors and all of us who consume food, it will be transformational,” he said.

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Seeds of doubt being sown, Part One, Confusion: ‘Will this bill really improve milk prices?”

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By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Feb. 16, 2024

EAST EARL, Pa. — While decades of scientific debate in terms of childhood health and nutrition is the curtain opponents hide behind, the anti-animal agenda is the top hurdle for the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act in the Senate.

Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) is the prime sponsor of the Senate bill, and he is a medical doctor in obstetrics and is taking a beating from billboards sponsored by Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) in his home state of Kansas. PCRM is a known arm of PETA. This tells us quite a bit, doesn’t it?

Meanwhile, the top 3 C’s facing the bill within the dairy industry, itself, need to be addressed. 

1) Confusion… Will it really improve milk prices? Addressed in this article

2) Consternation (fear)… What will processors do with “all of that skim”? Addressed in Part II here

3) Competition… Will it reduce the butterfat supply and affect the ramp up in cheese manufacturing or other dairy products? Addressed in Part III here

Plus…. the Checkoff Commitments… Will it interfere with checkoff-funded Milk Molecules Initiative for new beverages that identify and separate specific milk molecules for specific benefits (sleep drinks, energy drinks, immune function drinks, specific protein type drinks)? 

All of these questions are quietly floating around and sowing seeds of doubt, leading to analysis-paralysis, while the industry focus is on innovation and exports, not on fresh milk, or a healthy next generation of U.S. milk consumers.

All of these questions will be answered one at a time over the next several weeks, starting with the first “C”: Confusion.

“Will this bill really improve our milk prices?” was the question I was asked by a few farmers at a recent farm show. My response was to ask them if they are concerned about kids having healthy milk options they enjoy and if they are concerned about seeing further erosion of fluid milk sales, and losing another generation of milk drinkers?

I reached out to Calvin Covington, former milk cooperative CEO in the fluid milk markets of the Southeast and a primary architect of pricing milk by component yield even before Order Reform during his years with American Jersey Cattle Breeders.

Covington ran the numbers using 2023 average prices, and calculating pounds of milk, fat, and skim, utilization, and values, which yield a gross value of a hundredweight of milk being used for fluid processing at different fat levels. 

“At a $3.00 Class I differential, a hundredweight of milk going for 3.25 fluid milk (whole milk as standardized), returns an additional 25 cents per hundredweight over skim milk,” Covington writes, noting that the difference will change based on different Class I differentials.

Even in the counties with small or zero location differentials on the map, the base differential of $1.60 per hundredweight is still included, which means at least a 13 cents per hundredweight difference.

Previously, Covington has noted in presentations that milk prices improve as the average fat level of total fluid milk sales increases. The current average of all sales, nationwide, stands at 2%. A few years ago, it was below 2%. A fractional change in either direction influences Federal Milk Marketing Order blend prices.

Fluid milk demand also plays a role in manufacturing class prices, affecting farmers in regions where prices are based almost exclusively on cheese. 

That’s especially true right now as cheese production has been exploding, and the Class III milk price has been imploding, creating a wide spread below Class IV and pushing FMMO blend prices lower as milk is not moving out of Class III to the higher value Class IV. But the Federal Milk Marketing Law gives Class I dibs to attract milk. So Class I demand is relevant for cheese milk pricing too.

As whole milk sales have increased year-over-year, whole milk became the largest category of fluid milk sales in 2021. It is a bright spot in the fluid milk category.

In 2023, gains in whole milk sales and in lactose-free milk sales are credited with boosting the entire fluid milk category for year-over-year gains in back-to-back months of October and November. This helped flatten the year-to-date loss-curve on total fluid milk sales that had been running 2 to 4% lower year-over-year to be just 1.5% lower cumulatively at year end compared with 2022, according to USDA’s December estimated packaged fluid milk sales report, released in mid-February.

Still, there is ground to make up, as fluid milk sales volume in 2023 is 7.8% lower than pre-Covid 2019, when volume totaled 46.24 billion pounds, down 1.8% from 2018. Then, during pandemic lockdowns, milk sales stabilized, putting the total at 46.2 billion pounds for 2020, virtually unchanged from 2019. In 2021, fluid milk sales volume declined 4.1% to 44.3 billion pounds, followed by a 2.4% decrease in 2022 to 43.3 billion pounds, and now a 1.5% decline in 2023 at 42.6 billion pounds.

NMPF chart, Circana Inc. full-year 2023 data

Meanwhile, the big news reported recently is that plant-based fake-milk beverages saw sales decline by 6.6% in 2023, the second straight year of declines and the smallest sales since 2019, according to data from Circana Inc reported recently. 

Real dairy milk sales volume of 42.6 billion pounds in 2023 is not only a much larger category than the lookalikes at 337.7 million pounds, real dairy milk outperformed lookalikes on a trend basis in 2023 — down just 1.5% vs. plant-based being down 6.6%.

By comparison, plant-based beverage sales volume in 2023 was a fraction of 1% (0.8%) the size of real milk sales volume.

Whole milk education and awareness have helped drive this result. Consumers are paying attention to food science, even if the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, USDA (and FDA on labeling) continue to ignore it. Still, more education and freedom for children to enjoy milk is needed. The concern is that even though it is a smaller percentage loss, the 1.5% sales volume loss in the real milk category in 2023 represented 644 million pounds; whereas a 6.6% sales volume loss in plant-based beverages in 2023 represented 24 million pounds.

Speaking with a local milk bottler and ice cream maker recently – a producer handler – I learned he focuses on how his cows are fed to maintain their rolling average 5% butterfat during the summertime to make ice cream and satisfy consumer demand for whole milk. Their whole milk sales have skyrocketed, and this in turn, to the delight of the grocery store they are in, has helped boost sales of all fluid milk as a category in that store.

This has him thinking of doing a 5% butterfat, non-standardized, maybe even cream top, full-fat milk in glass bottles for the store. The store displays a 97 Milk banner at the entrance and 97milk.com website stickers at the dairy case.

Speaking with a manager at a different grocery store chain with stores in Pennsylvania and surrounding states, I learned their sales of whole milk have also increased by leaps and bounds in the past several years, boosting the entire fluid milk category by 14% at their stores throughout the region. They include the 97milk.com website and information in their sales circulars to their shoppers.

As for the schools — If even half of the schools offered a mix of milkfat choices as the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act would allow them to do, the amount of butterfat sold as Class I would increase. This would improve the fat side of the fat/skim pricing in the three Southeast Orders and Arizona. It would also help the Federal Order pool dollars reach after actual components are paid first in Multiple Component Pricing Orders everywhere else.

Total Class I fluid milk sales have dropped like a rock since Congress passed the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act in 2010, which removed whole and 2% milk options from school meals, followed by USDA in 2012 further banning whole and 2% milk as a la carte or vending machine ‘competing beverage’ options in the Department’s Smart Snacks regulations.

Look at the graph above. It was shared as part of Dr. Mark Stephenson’s testimony in the recent USDA FMMO milk pricing hearing.

Improved total sales of school milk hold potential to increase total Class I fluid milk sales. A Pennsylvania school trial in 2019 showed a 52% increase in milk sales when whole and 2% milk options were offered. Students showed a 3 to 1 preference for whole milk over the 1% milk option.

When their options were expanded, more students chose milk instead of refusing it. Students were able to choose, and some of them continued to choose low-fat, and that’s okay! The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is about choice.

A conservative estimate of a 25% increase in school milk sales can be anticipated if Whole Milk for Healthy Kids gets over the finish line in the Senate after its overwhelming passage in December in the House. That is half of the increase seen in the Pennsylvania school trial. If realized, a 25% increase in school milk sales equates to a little over one billion pounds of additional annual milk sales, which could raise the entire Class I fluid milk category by a little more than 2%.

This is based on the fact that kids aren’t just throwing away milk at school. Some are refusing to take the milk they are offered with school meals. This means sales are being lost.

Fluid milk sales declines will only get worse if USDA implements one of two draft proposals the Department announced a year ago. One would eliminate flavored milk from elementary and middle schools altogether. The other would require added sugar levels to be reduced dramatically in flavored milk at school. It’s widely known that when milkfat is retained in making chocolate milk, less added sugar is needed! 

Demand for whole milk is beneficial on both the milk fat and skim sides of the equation because whole milk sales move the nearly-complete product – the skim with the fat — leaving some of the fat through standardization, but not leaving any skim.

The result of these options in schools could be even better depending on how many schools choose to exercise these options.

If the industry doesn’t supply what consumers demand, sales are lost. Schoolchildren are already the dairy industry’s consumers, and they will hold the purse strings in the future.

Just as the Dietary Guidelines Committee and USDA continue to ignore science on milkfat, we are all ignoring our nation’s schoolchildren and what they are telling us about why they are turning away from nutrient-dense milk at a time when the nutrients milk delivers – that we may think they are receiving — have never been more important.

When the Pennsylvania school trial ended after one school year, a 95% reduction in the average daily volume of discarded milk was recorded. The school Student Council did an environmental project to measure this by measuring the volume of milk thrown away in unopened and partly consumed half-pint containers.

Shouldn’t we be listening to what the young people are telling us? They are our future, after all.

In the next part of this series, we’ll address the question: “What are the processors going to do with all of that skim?” Oh my!

In the meantime, consider this: Fresh fluid milk is the most notably locally-produced dairy product maintaining dairy farm relevance in regions and communities across America. What will the dairy industry look like five years from now, even one year from now? Maybe we should be asking the schoolchildren to answer that question.

As of Feb. 14, 2024, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, S. 1957, has 15 sponsors from 12 states as illustrated on this map. Graphic by Sherry Bunting

Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act S. 1957 needs more cosponsors: We need your help! Please contact your state’s two U.S. Senators

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The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act has moooved to the Senate. S. 1957 is identical to H.R. 1147. As of Feb. 21, 2024, the Senate bill has 15 sponsors from 12 states. This map shows what states have both Senators or one Senator signed on and which states have none. We need more cosponsors to get this bill out of the Ag Committee and onto the Senate floor for a successful vote. Will YOU call or write TWO? Map by Sherry Bunting

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, January 26, 2024 (Cosponsor data updated Feb. 21, 2024)

WASHINGTON — The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is now up to the Senate, where more cosponsors are definitely needed to push it past some barriers and get it to the floor for a successful vote.

Senate bill S. 1957 is not a mandate for whole milk. This bill ends a mandate against whole milk, which is federally banned from schools (2% reduced fat milk is also prohibited. Only fat-free and 1% low-fat milk are allowed to be offered with meals or a la carte or in vending machines).  

In December, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) blocked the unanimous consent motion by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.). Marshall was seeking an immediate Senate vote on H.R. 1147 – Congressman G.T. Thompson’s bill – on Dec. 14, 2023, just one day after it was overwhelmingly passed in the House of Representatives by a bipartisan 330-99 vote. It was previously passed in the House Education Committee in a bipartisan 26 to 13 vote.

Marshall chugged a glass of whole milk and gave an inspiring speech about getting the bill to the President’s desk for Christmas. Sen. Marshall is a medical doctor, an obstetrician, and a member of the Senate Ag Committee.

“This is a slam-dunk for American families,” he said.

Sen. Stabenow played the role of the Grinch stealing the opportunity for immediate whole milk passage in the Senate on the heels of the overwhelming House vote as she objected to the unanimous consent request on Dec. 14.

But that’s not the end of this story, just the beginning.

An identical Senate bill, S. 1957, The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act was introduced in June 2023. It was read twice on the Senate floor and referred to the Senate Agriculture Committee, chaired by — you guessed it — Sen. Stabenow of Michigan. This means she is in a ‘gate-keeper’ position for this bill. If it doesn’t come before her committee, it will have trouble getting to the floor.

This is where we can help by raising the number of Senate cosponsors! There are 15 sponsors as of Feb. 21 (updated). We need to get to one-third or one-half of the Senate. That’s 35 to 50.

While news reports indicate Sen. Stabenow will retire after this term and is not seeking re-election, her legacy in caring about childhood nutrition and agriculture may be important to her. She stated on the Senate floor that these decisions about milk in school should be made by the scientific committees. She wants to “keep having these conversations.”

Let’s take her up on that by having conversations with our Senators to cosponsor S. 1957. The Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee has for three cycles and over 15 years refused to consider the preponderance of sound evidence about the benefits of milkfat that the USDA keeps screening out of their deliberations process. 

The DGA Committee is meeting right now for 2025-30 DGAs that seek to refine the current dietary patterns, not re-evaluate them. Even the DGA Committee in 2020 admitted their recommended dietary patterns are deficient in key nutrients that milk delivers.

Here’s the bottom line: S. 1957 was introduced in June 2023 by Sen. Marshall (R-Kan.), along with Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), James Risch and Mike Crapo (both R-Idaho), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Angus King (I-Maine).

Four more cosponsors have been gained, they are Senators J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.)

As of January 24, 2024, S. 1957 has 14 sponsors from 11 states in the U.S. Senate. Of these 15, seven are on the Senate Ag Committee (Marshall, Hyde-Smith, Gillibrand, Fetterman, Welch, Grassley, Braun). 

We need the rest of the Ag Committee, including Ranking Member John Boozman (R-Ark.). If you live in Arkansas, contact him. If you live in Minnesota, contact Ag Committee Senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith; in Illinois, Sen. Richard Durbin; in Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown; in Kentucky, Sen. Mitch McConnell; in Iowa, Chuck Grassley has already signed on, but Joni Ernst has not; in North Dakota, talk with Sen. John Hoeven; in South Dakota, Sen. John Thune; in Nebraska, Sen. Deb Fischer; in Georgia, Sen. Raphael Warnack; in New Mexico, Sen. Ben Ray Lujan; in Alabama, Sen. Tommy Tuberville; in Colorado, Sen. Michael Bennet; and in New Jersey, Sen. Cory Booker.

No matter where you live, contact your state’s two U.S. Senators. We need as many Senate cosponsors as possible, and we need Senators motivated to speak with Chairwoman Stabenow, to ask her to please stop putting the ego and agenda of Washington bureaucrats above the health and welfare of America’s children and the economic stability of America’s dairy farmers.

This bill is about choice. It is not a mandate. It simply allows schools to offer whole and 2% flavored and unflavored milk at school lunch and breakfast without financial penalties for exceeding outdated milkfat limits that are unnecessary or even harmful to children.

If we want children to benefit from the nutrition milk delivers, then we need to deliver the permission for our children to be able to choose milk they will love at school where they have two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. That’s how they actually benefit from the complete protein and 13 essential nutrients milk delivers.

Let’s stay positive. We can’t afford to lose ANOTHER generation of milk drinkers and think we will still have a dairy industry in many parts of the U.S. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is an opportunity for dairy farmers to revitalize and renew fluid milk demand, but more importantly, it’s an opportunity for schoolchildren to choose milk they will love for life and health. It’s also an opportunity to drastically cut the amount of wasted milk in school cafeterias, a win for stewardship of resources and the environment.

A 2021 survey by IDFA showed that 78% of American parents who described themselves as voters, choose 2% or Whole Milk for their families as the most delicious and nutritious option, but their children can choose neither 2% nor Whole milk at school where they have two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year.

This survey is consistent with what a Pennsylvania school trial in 2019 showed. The students preferred Whole Milk 3 to 1 over the 1% low-fat milk. When 2% and Whole Milk were offered in the coolers, students consumed 52% more total milk and the average daily volume of discarded milk was reduced by 95%. This means more students took the offered milk instead of refusing it, and fewer students threw away the milk they took with their meals.

The Grassroots Pennsylvania Dairy Advisory Committee, under chairman Bernie Morrissey’s leadership, has launched a letter-writing and phone-calling campaign seeking cosponsors for S. 1957. They have put together the tools, but grassroots farmers and citizens must be the ones to carry it out and send the letters and make the calls.

We need to help Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow understand this issue is about lifting the federal school lunch and breakfast ban that was placed on delicious nutritious whole milk in 2012 so that school districts, parents and students can make healthy milk choices that are enjoyed and not discarded.

This bill is not a mandate for whole milk. This bill ends a mandate against whole milk.  

This is about options, choice, and a future for kids and dairy farms. Will YOU call or write your TWO?

Let’s keep this bill moooving. Every state has two U.S. Senators. Click here for a sample letter.

Find the Washington addresses and phone numbers for your state’s Senators at https://www.senate.gov/ – Click the icon in the top left corner, select your state from drop-down menu to see how to contact them. Or look for your state in this printable directory.

For a more detailed letter, like the one sent by the Grassroots PA Dairy Advisory Committee to Senator Robert Casey, Jr. of Pennsylvania, click here.

For a simple phone message guide for contacting Senate Ag Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (and if in PA Senator Robert Casey) click here.

See the complete Action Packet and find some additional resources in a folder here

To email your Senators: Go to https://democracy.io/ – type in your address, city and zip code, click submit. Your two Senators and one Rep. will show up with red check marks. Click ‘Write to them.’ Then, on the next screen, write the body of your letter. If you want, you can start with who you are, where you live, what you do. You can also mention if you have school-aged children or grandchildren. Then copy and paste from the text below or write your own message simply asking your Senators to cosponsor S. 1957 The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act

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RE: Whole Milk for Healthy Kids, S.1957 by Senators Roger Marshall and Peter Welch

I write to ask you to cosponsor S. 1957, the Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, to bring back the choice of Whole Milk in schools. This bill is not a mandate, it is about choice, so students can have the delicious Whole Milk option to benefit nutritionally from milk they will love. The House passed this in a 330 to 99 vote in December. We hope you will soon add your name to the list of cosponsors for the Senate. Whole milk is standardized at 3.25% fat (3.5% in Calif.). Systematic reviews of the scientific literature show milkfat should no longer be demonized by federal policies, especially for children.

Currently, 95% of U.S. schools are in the National School Lunch Program, which in 2012 made rules requiring only fat-free and low-fat (1%) milk be available to students during school hours. Since then, student milk consumption has declined drastically, and milk has become a most frequently discarded item. A 2021 survey showed 78% of parents choose whole or 2% milk for their families, but these options are restricted at school, where kids receive two meals a day, five days a week, three-quarters of the year. A 2019 school trial showed milk consumption increased by 52%, and waste volume decreased by 95%, when offerings were expanded to include Whole and 2% milk. More students chose milk, and fewer students threw away milk. That is a win for kids, dairy farmers and the environment.

This is a critical time to provide what milk delivers — complete protein and 13 essential nutrients. When students aren’t drinking the milk offered at school, they don’t receive its nutrition. In fact, the Dietary Guidelines Committee in 2020 admitted their recommended dietary patterns lack enough key nutrients, including three of the four nutrients of public health concern that milk provides: potassium, calcium, and Vitamin D, which is fat soluble.

Thank you in advance for helping bring the nutritious, delicious option of Whole Milk back to school lunch and breakfast by cosponsoring S. 1957.

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USDA FMMO hearing resumes, Dr. Stephenson testifies for MIG proposal to end $1.60 Class I base differential

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USDA’s cross examination reveals possible flaw in simulator model result

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Jan. 19, 2024

CARMEL, Ind. — Shadow pricing, demand elasticity, commoditized loss of prior incentives, balancing cost, give-up cost, base differential, uniform differential, market-clearing price…

These terms ruled the day when the USDA National Hearing on Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) proposals resumed in Carmel, Indiana this week after a more than four-week recess.

The hearing began in late August. It did not conclude by Fri., Jan. 19, so it will again recess until Jan. 29. 

American Farm Bureau estimates that another 270 days of post-hearing processes must follow before a USDA decision could be implemented, and even this is subject to proposals that seek a 15-month delay between decision and implementation due to potential impacts on CME futures-based risk management tools, such as Dairy Revenue Protection (DRP).

This is far from over, and hanging in the balance is the Class I price calculation, now based on an averaging method, under which farmers have lost more than $1.02 billion since May 2019 vs. the previous ‘higher of’.

Testimony Tues., Jan. 16 included Dr. Mark Stephenson, retired UW-Madison dairy economist on behalf of Milk Innovation Group (MIG), made up of ‘innovative’ and branded fluid milk processors, including fairlife, HP Hood, Anderson-Erickson, Danone North America, Shamrock, Organic Valley, Aurora Organic, and Pennsylvania’s own Turner Dairy Farms.

Dr. Stephenson delivered his bombshell for MIG that was based on analysis he did using 2016 data in a simulator model, from which he made “certain discoveries.”

First, Stephenson suggested that fluid milk is shifting to become price-elastic vs. the long-held belief that fluid milk sales are price-inelastic. This was followed up by fluid milk processor representatives showing post-Covid fluid milk sales volumes declined as prices rose.

Stephenson cautioned USDA to refrain from setting regulated prices too high, saying this would reduce returns to producers by reducing total fluid milk sales. 

This suggestion was challenged in cross examination. In fact, AFBF chief economist Dr. Roger Cryan noted the FMMO focus on fluid milk was originally partly predicated on its “public good” as a food staple, almost akin to a “public utility.”

In cross examination on Jan. 17, Stephenson also revealed he was paid by MIG to analyze the $1.60 base differential, and his work began before MIG finalized its proposal to remove the $1.60 per cwt. base differential all the way down to zero for all Class I milk, nationwide.

Currently, the $1.60 base differential is built uniformly into the Class I price for every regulated county across all FMMOs. The varied location differentials are added to the base differential and spread across the revenue-sharing pools.

Stephenson used the U.S. Dairy Sector Simulator Model (USDSS) to develop a map as though a “milk-dictator” could efficiently “move milk to its highest global use” through various constraints. 

In the marginal value map result, Stephenson said the U.S. average value of the differences was minus-38 cents, indicating on a national average, it is more valuable (cost saving) to the model to have milk in a cheese plant than in a fluid plant in most counties. The range goes from somewhat more than $2 per cwt more favorable to a cheese plant (in red) to somewhat more than $2 per cwt more favorable to a fluid plant (in green) in the Southeast. From this “potent revelation,” Dr. Stephenson concludes that, “The model result bolsters the argument to not dilute the value of the $1.60 into the pool if that value represents a balancing cost for fluid and an opportunity cost (give-up) for manufacturing plants. Rather, require the fluid plants to pay the $1.60, but let the fluid plants pay that directly to the farms, cooperatives or manufacturing plants who supply the milk” to the fluid plant.

The map showed the incremental differences in ‘Class I minus Class III “shadow pricing,” across the country.

These marginal value differences, said Stephenson, reflect the opportunity costs of getting manufacturing plants to give up milk to fluid plants in the Central U.S., where milk production exceeds population vs. the cost to balance fluid milk markets in the East, particularly the Southeast, as well as in California and southern Nevada, where population exceeds milk production.

It was the questioning from USDA AMS administrator Erin Taylor on the ‘shadow pricing’ figures in various anchor cities that prompted Stephenson to concede: “You may have caught a major flaw in what I have done here, so I would want to look at this more carefully.”

Yes, he will be back to address such questions when the ever-lengthening hearing resumes on January 29.

Notwithstanding exposure of a possible flaw in the simulator analysis, Stephenson said the ‘market-clearing’ price is the target to aim at, and the system of setting regulated minimum prices “should err on the side of being too-low instead of too-high.”

He said processors will pay premiums in the breach of a ‘too-low’ minimum price, but there are few options for processors to deal with a ‘too-high’ minimum price — other than to opt out of regulation for manufacturing plants (de-pool), but that fluid milk plants have no ability to opt out. They are required to remain regulated by FMMOs.

“Manufacturing is by far the largest use of milk in our dairy industry,” he said, noting that Class I fluid use at 18% of total U.S. milk production (regulated and unregulated). Therefore, he said, manufacturing use should no longer be treated in the FMMO system as “the trailing spouse in the marriage.”

On MIG’s behalf, he introduced a new way of looking at the marginal value between Class III and Class I, and a mechanical change that could be made in how the $1.60 base differential is paid as needed directly to producers, cooperatives and plants that actually supply milk to Class I plants, instead of being paid to the FMMO pools.

The $1.60 became a uniform part of the Class I price in the 1999 Order Reform. About 40 cents of this $1.60 was included to represent the cost of farmers transitioning from Grade B to Grade A. The rest represents ‘give up’ costs from manufacturing to Class I and balancing costs to serve the fluid market.

Stephenson backed up MIG’s assertion that farmers don’t need any of this $1.60 base differential because virtually all milk produced today is now Grade A. During cross examination, NMPF attorneys brought up the cost farmers have to maintain Grade A status. Don’t their costs count here?

Undeterred, Stephenson suggested that these costs are accounted for in the classified pricing since all milk for all uses is Grade A, today. He said that USDA uses ‘minimum pricing’ as a tool so that the regulated price leaves space for voluntary premiums that processors can pay to “incentivize something else.”

“Being chronically above the market-clearing price creates a surplus product, which the market can’t clear,” said Stephenson. “Our dairy markets have always walked on a knife’s edge. Being plus or minus 1% on milk supplies can cause some pretty big swings in prices as the markets do attempt to clear that.”

As for removing the $1.60 uniform price differential either from the price or the pool, Stephenson said it is like “other premiums” that have become “commoditized.” 

He likened it to the rbST premium and milk quality premiums, saying those premiums have also become “commoditized.” 

For example, when farmers were first asked to give up rbST and sign pledges, a premium was offered. Now, that premium is not paid, he said, because the practice of abandoning rbST is now “commoditized.” 

Likewise, said Stephenson: “Milk quality (low SCC) has improved so much that those premiums are not there anymore. They have also become commoditized.”

So, the better dairy farmers get, the more their incentive premiums — and even big chunks of their regulated minimum price — are at risk to be cannibalized by milk buyers because the farmers have now done what they’ve been incentivized to do, so they don’t need to be paid to do it.

MIG also seeks to stop NMPF’s proposal to tweak and raise location differentials across the Class I surface map, putting on the stand some of their members to show how unfair competition arises between independent bottlers and cooperatively owned fluid milk plants in the same region.

For his part, Stephenson noted the concept of pulling the $1.60 base differential out of the pool may discourage non-productive distant pooling.

This week was certainly eye-opening as MIG is all about the processor costs with zero regard for producer costs. They even put an HP Hood representative on the stand who included the $120 million recently announced for expanding the Extended Shelf Life (ESL) plant in Batavia, NY as a “balancing cost,” that somehow justifies giving back the base differential to processors even though processors can pass their costs on to consumers, whereas farmers cannot. 

Under cross examination, Hood’s representative admitted that plant-based beverages are also bottled in those so-called ESL ‘milk balancing’ facilities, along with premium products like Lactaid.

Meanwhile farmers continue to incur costs associated with a whole host of improvements that were at one time incentivized. It appears the processors expect farmers to forgo being paid for those costs simply “because everyone’s doing it” and incentives are no longer needed.

The idea here is to deflate regulated minimum prices as much as possible in search of the elusive and not-well-defined Holy Grail: the market-clearing price. 

Processors want cheaper milk, and they’ve got multiple proposals to accomplish that. They want to deflate the regulated minimum milk price to free up their ability to pay premiums for “something else.”

In fact, in his testimony, Stephenson admitted that as these costs and premiums are “commoditized,” space is freed up to “pay premiums for something else.”

What is the “something else” that processors will pay to incentivize after they potentially succeed in reducing the regulated minimum price in multiple ways through multiple proposals?

Are climate premiums the next thing coming once the milk price is deflated far enough? Will USDA buy what MIG and IDFA are selling?

Stay tuned.

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