Yesterday I went with Farmer to our milk coop meeting. I
enjoy going because I want a better understanding of what happens with our milk
and things that effect the markets.
The first item on the agenda was safety. Every meeting I’ve
gone to this is stressed and is always first on the list.
The two most frequent accidents on the farm are tractor roll
overs and unguarded PTOs. We were encouraged to check the PTO covers on all our
machinery and to stress safety with our employees.
Foremost Farms has many plants and they work on safety also.
The Appleton plant has 2 million hours which translates to 8+ years without a
lost-time incident. This is the largest cheese plant the coop owns.
All but one plant is housed in Wisconsin with one plant in
Minnesota and headquarters in Indiana.
Milk sales are continuing to slide downwards. It has been
declining since the 1940s. There are so many varieties of drinks on the market
that the competition is crippling milk sales. Because of that cheese is the
primary product our coop produces.
The Midwest area production of milk is up 3.6%.
There will be 21 million more pounds of cheese made this
year than last. There have been 317,256 pounds of cheese produced through July
31 this year. American cheese – 87,079 pounds, Italian cheese – 230,177 pounds,
and 29,136 pounds of butter.
Our coop has exported 5.4 million pounds of cheese and 3.7
million pounds of butter this year which is already twice as much as 2012.
Another product that we make with our milk is demineralized
whey which is used in infant formula. If you have used Nestlé’s Good Start then
it’s a good bet our milk was included in the making of that formula. The whey
used in formula must come from white cheese. The industry doesn’t want yellow
whey.
2/3 of the milk produced in the US is done with the help of
immigrant workers.
Keep your eyes open for a new logo to be displayed on dairy
products. It’s a resurrection of the Real Seal from the 1970s. If the product
has the Real Seal then it is real dairy. It should help identify products
easier.
The one thing I knew without going to this meeting was that
we work awfully hard to get that gallon of milk.
