There Are a Lot of Trends Happening Within Our Industry

DANIEL LAUSCH PRESIDENT, NORTHEAST DAIRY FOODS ASSOCIATION

Once again, I find myself writing the NDFA President’s quarterly magazine article on a flight from Texas to New York. This issue will cover the subject of trends, which is far from a limited subject matter.

While sitting at the gate, the billboard across the hallway reads, “Dallas Fort Worth is the Largest Airport in the World to be Carbon Neutral without using purchased carbon credits.” The promotional message has rolling hills of green grass lined with wind turbines, indicating the airport’s source of electricity. Going green, going carbon neutral, and promoting more recycling are all very strong trends in our industries today.

I’m flying on United Airlines, which is pledging to source more of their jet fuel from renewable sources than other airlines, indicating they are leading their competition – and, naturally, hoping customers will choose to purchase their next flight from United Airlines to support their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) actions. CSR covers a multitude of subjects that have been very trendy in recent years. It involves employees, their families, neighbors to our manufacturing and processing plants, and the whole city, town, or village where our businesses are located. Shrinkflation is actually headed in the wrong direction for CSR, because the smaller container size generally makes for more packaging material per pound of finished product.

Farm milk components have been on the rise in recent years. There are several factors pushing butterfat percentage and protein percentage higher: volume controls based on pounds, improved genetics, most Federal Orders payment calculations to dairy farmers being based on Multiple Component Pricing, and the high price of grains, which has farmers purchasing and feeding less grain to their dairy cows.

The size of dairy farms continues the trend of fewer dairy farms, with each remaining active dairy farm shipping more milk. The only limiting factor keeping dairy farmers from adding more cows is the many volume controls or quotes that milk markets have in place to keep their milk supply from overrunning their milk plants.

The milk hauling trend is more single-stop dairy farms with a “pump on the farm” that allows to take weight and expense off the milk tanker, allowing for a larger legal payload. A properly sized pump on the farm roughly cuts the milk loading time in half, reducing the truck driver’s time and labor on the farm. A single-stop farm produces enough milk in 48 hours (or fewer) to fill a milk tanker by itself, without any help from neighboring dairy farms.

The Great Resignation has lots of employees moving to a different job or changing careers to a completely different business. It’s very easy to conclude that your current employees are more likely to leave than stay with your company. Work from home is something we did not even talk about five years ago, but now it’s one of the top three reasons that employees are looking to change jobs. New hires are looking for quick rewards and promotions early in their careers, not years in the making.

We have lots of trends happening within our industry that are changing the playing field now and will continue to do so in future years.