Sarah's blog
The Happy News About Mad Cows
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
In its quest to find the proverbial needle in a haystack, the U.S. government has looked through a lot of hay, and found four…not needles, but cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. After taking upwards of one million neurological samples of brain tissue from America’s cattle supply in the past decade, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has confirmed a quartet of cases, the most recent of which was in California last month.
The good news on this is both short-term, and especially, long-term. In the short run, beef markets bounced around, but ultimately shrugged off the impact of the discovery. In the long run, the news is that the system of deterrents we have in place to prevent the introduction and spread of mad cow continues to work. Even with extensive testing, we’re not finding a significant number of infected cows. The firewalls are holding. The effectiveness of these firewalls also demonstrates why a teaspoon of proactivity is worth many pounds of late-to-the-party responses, if and when things hit the fan.
read more»
No More Games of Kick the Can
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
March temperatures may be warming up across most of the country, but in Washington, things are cooling down. This isn’t a weather report; it’s a blunt assessment of the pace of action on Capitol Hill.
It’s a well-documented fact that the legislative process, which normally moves about as fast as a turtle, is slower still in election years. And this year is no exception. If anything, expectations in 2012 for any substantive action are even lower, given the partisan gridlock affecting both chambers of Congress.
That’s why the National Milk Producers Federation Board of Directors made a strong statement earlier this month when it adopted a resolution urging Congress to pass a Farm Bill this year.
read more»
The Right-Sized Answer
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
The latest annual summary from USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service on farm and livestock operations contains some interesting numbers about dairy production – and it’s worth exploring the data a bit more because of its policy implications.
First, all of the figures I am citing are contained in the NASS “Farms, Land in Farms, and Livestock Operations, 2011 Summary,” which was released by USDA last month. This yearly report certainly makes plain the ongoing trend of American agriculture of the past 100+ years, wherein farms have gotten larger, even as there are fewer of them. There’s no new news in that.
read more»
2012 Shaping Up To Be Good Year For Exports
Release Date: February 2012
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
Although dairy commodity prices have faltered in recent weeks, there’s no disputing the fact that 2011 was a year with strong milk prices, due in no small part to a robust global market. While the final, official tally isn’t yet in, it appears that 13.3% of U.S. milk production in 2011 was sold to customers outside of our borders. That’s a new record, and a welcome development for farmers and processors alike.
While the outlook for both the global economy and dairy prices in 2012 is anything but clear, what is clear is that we need to continue building on our track record of success in developing foreign customers, whether close to home in Mexico and Canada, or in Pacific Rim countries miles from home.
read more»
A Busy Year Ahead
Release Date: January 2012
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
Supposedly, the Mayans predicted that the world will end in 2012. Of course, I don’t place any stock in their thousand year-old forecast, but I do predict that it will be a busy and turbulent year ahead…picking right up where 2011 left off. Here are a few things that we’ll be watching in the months ahead:
First and foremost, farmers need to push Congress to pass a new Farm Bill – sooner, rather than later. The current one expires in nine months, but what’s worse, the distractions caused by the upcoming elections in 10 months will make it increasingly difficult to get the House, Senate and White House to agree on anything as the year unfolds.
read more»
Farm Bill to Rise from Supercommittee’s Ashes
Release Date: December 2011
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
Often times, the wheels of government hardly turn at all…until an emergency appears, and then suddenly they spin like crazy to get traction. Such has been the case in Washington regarding farm policy, where a process that could have taken years has been accelerated into a period of a couple months. The threat of shrinking federal budgets has been the torque to prompt our legislators to make hard, necessary and prudent choices about the future.
By all appearances, it looks like the next Farm Bill essentially has been drafted, in a very focused fashion. And that means that regarding dairy policy, a lengthy journey is nearer to completion…even while we can’t (to mix metaphors) count our chickens before they’re hatched.
read more»
2011 NMPF Annual Meeting Presentation
Release Date: November 2011
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
For the November CEO's Corner, we are including the joint presentation made November 15th, 2011 by Jerry Kozak and NMPF Chairman Randy Mooney at the NMPF Annual Meeting in San Diego, California.
Jerry Kozak (JK):
Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. I know that our presentation is all that’s standing between you and the cheese reception, so we’ll try to make this short and sweet. Let us begin by reflecting not on the time of day, but on the time of the year.
Last Friday was Veteran’s Day: the 11th day of the 11th month of 2011. So it’s appropriate that we start this speech by acknowledging and thanking the veterans in our audience. Let's have our veterans stand, and let us thank them for their service to our country.
Randy Mooney (RM): read more»
The Correct Course
Release Date: October 2011
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
In the development of any new concept or product, there comes a time when the pursuit of perfection ultimately shifts toward the exploration of what’s possible. We’ve now reached that point in the development of new federal dairy policy.
From the summer of 2009 – when the brutality of the Great Dairy Depression first manifested itself – to this past summer, NMPF solicited and then synthesized a variety of viewpoints in the development of a radical reassessment of the best safety net for dairy farmers. We called it Foundation for the Future, and a great deal of spadework was done by a full cross-section of the dairy industry in providing unique, and sometimes opposing, perspectives on how best to form that foundation.
read more»
The Wrong Path
Release Date: September 2011
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
When it comes to milk safety, the dairy industry and government regulators usually see eye to eye. Obviously, dairy farmers have their livelihoods riding on the reputation and reality of milk being a safe, wholesome food. State and federal regulators make sure that hygiene and sanitation rules are being followed (and enforced), but there is in dairy production generally a shared cooperative sense between the private and public sectors that we have the same goals.
read more»
If You Can’t Stand the Heat...
Release Date: August 2011
Jerry Kozak,
President/CEO
The last two weeks of July have been brutally hot across much of the nation, including the nation’s capital. It’s been hot in Washington not just because of the weather, but also from the friction of the high-stakes negotiations between Congress and the White House, Democrats and Republicans, special interests and NGOs…all of whom are fixated on efforts to rein in spending, reduce the deficit, and prevent a default on the national debt.
This same process has also affected what has happened recently with dairy policy. By now, most are aware that the ideas of NMPF’s Foundation for the Future dairy policy package, which we’ve developed during the past two years, have been written into legislative language and introduced as a discussion draft by Congressman Collin Peterson of Minnesota. This is a huge, and welcome, next step in our ongoing efforts to overhauling dairy policy.
read more»
|
Printer-friendly version