14 CapitalPress.com
November 17, 2017
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Dairy/Livestock
Darigold economist: Canada milk policy spoiling market
Northwest
cooperative
gathering evidence
By DON JENKINS
Capital Press
OLYMPIA — U.S. milk
producers will lose an esti-
mated $1 billion over the next
five years if Canada’s new
dairy price system stays in
place, a Darigold economist
said Tuesday.
Ken Bailey, the coopera-
tive’s lead economic planner
and analyst, told the Washing-
ton Senate Agriculture Com-
mittee that he’s marshaling
evidence to show that U.S.
dairy farmers are being shut
out of Canada and undercut in
other countries.
“It’s an urgent, urgent is-
sue,” he said after his presen-
tation. “Our milk checks are
going to go down.”
Darigold, headquartered in
Seattle and owned by about
500 Northwest farm families,
is among the dairy groups
hoping to influence North
American Free Trade Agree-
ment negotiations.
Darigold is taking aim at
the Class 7 price structure in-
troduced in February by Ca-
nadian dairy producers and
processors. The agreement
lowered production costs for
skim-milk powder.
Bailey said he’s pulled
together numbers that show
how the Canadian pricing
strategy has affected U.S. pro-
ducers. He said that Tuesday’s
presentation was the first time
he’s outlined him findings in
public.
“We want to get the word
out, it’s a big problem,” Bai-
ley said. “Our goal for the
Don Jenkins/Capital Press
Darigold economic planner and analyst Ken Bailey, right, talks with
Darigold lobbyist Dan Coyne on Nov. 14 on the Capitol Campus in
Olympia. Bailey outlined for lawmakers his study on how Canadian
dairy policies are hurting U.S. milk producers.
according to the Puget Sound
Business Journal.
Darigold is a major ex-
porter of milk products. The
cooperative opposes simply
withdrawing from NAFTA.
The Dairy Farmers of
dairy industry is to affect
NAFTA negotiations.”
Milk is Washington’s sec-
ond most valuable farm com-
modity, behind apples. Dari-
gold is the state’s third largest
privately owned company,
Canada wants to continue
to exempt its industry from
NAFTA, according to com-
ments the group submitted to
its government in July. The
group defended its pricing
policy and said managing the
supply of milk products is a
“breath of fresh air” in an un-
steady marketplace.
“The Canadian dairy in-
dustry has respected and will
continue to respect existing
international trade agree-
ments and their associated
regulations,” the group stated.
“The same cannot be said for
the U.S. dairy industry, which
time and again has proven
they are not willing to play
by the rules of international
trade.”
Bailey accused Canada of
dumping surplus milk prod-
ucts into the global market.
“The system was designed
to undercut world prices,”
Schilder newest member of
Idaho Dairy Hall of Fame
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — The late John
Schilder was inducted into
the Idaho Dairy Hall of Fame
Nov. 9 before hundreds of his
peers he so willingly helped
during difficult times.
Schilder died in Janu-
ary 2015 and his wife of 42
years, Aggie, and their four
children and families were
presented with an award
honoring him during the an-
nual meeting of Dairy West,
formerly known as United
Dairymen of Idaho.
The Schilder family owns
a dairy near Buhl.
“Be proud of your profes-
sion. Love your animals and
your family,” Aggie Schilder
said during a brief speech,
summarizing the things that
were important to her hus-
band.
She told Capital Press that
her husband didn’t serve on a
lot of boards but he loved his
animals and was dedicated to
the dairy industry.
“His cows were very im-
portant to him,” she said. “He
always said, ‘When you take
care of your cows, your cows
will take care of you.’ He was
proud of his herd. He wasn’t
a board member of this and
Courtesy of Dairy West
Aggie Schilder holds a photo of her late husband, Idaho dairyman John Schilder, who was inducted
into the Idaho Dairy Hall of Fame Nov. 9 during Dairy West’s annual meeting.
a board member of that. He
was always on the dairy and
physically worked with the
employees on the dairy.”
Aggie Schilder said her
husband didn’t care much for
politics. “He wanted to pro-
vide product to the consumer
and that was his love. That
Ag needs Trump, adviser says
By DAN WHEAT
Capital Press
YAKIMA, Wash. — Pres-
ident Donald Trump may “of-
fend” by what he says and
does, but “he isn’t owned by
anyone” and “he’s the kind of
guy we need,” says a lawyer in-
strumental in picking Trump’s
advisory Agriculture and Rural
Issues team for the 2016 elec-
tion campaign.
Gary Baise, a principal at
OFW Law, Washington, D.C.,
talked about Trump at the
Washington State Dairy Fed-
eration’s annual meeting at the
Yakima Convention Center,
Nov. 7, on the eve of the one-
year anniversary of Trump’s
election.
“He doesn’t know us, but
he understands us. He knows
something has happened in ru-
ral America,” Baise said, noting
Republican Trump carried 84.6
percent of the rural vote while
Democratic presidential nomi-
nee Hillary Clinton carried 73.5
percent of the urban vote.
Since Trump’s election the
stock market has gained $5 tril-
lion mainly because of reduced
regulations on business, unem-
ployment is the lowest level in
17 years and if tax reform hap-
pens the Dow Jones Industrial
Average could reach 25,000 to
27,000 and Republicans could
win a 60-plus-seat Senate ma-
jority, Baise said.
He said he’s optimistic tax
reform will happen because
senators such as John McCain
and Jeff Flake who hate Trump
will vote for it because they
know otherwise “people will
have their heads.”
“In
John
McCain you
have someone
who hates him
even more than
(New York Sen.
Chuck) Schum-
Gary Baise er. What you
may not know
is McCain and
Hilary Clinton are very close.
They are part of what Mr.
Trump calls ‘the swamp,’” he
said. “Mr. Trump is something
we have never seen. One thing
he suffers from is never having
had a strong board of directors,
but Franklin Roosevelt was
probably the only other pres-
ident not bought and sold by
special interests.
“Even though he can’t spell
agriculture, he knows working
people and what makes them
tick. …”
Baise also spoke about
North Korea.
“We have three carrier
groups off the coast of North
Korea and three Los Angeles
class nuclear submarines each
with 20 multiple warheads.
Kim Jong-un may see his mis-
sile blast off but he will never
live to see whether it was suc-
cessful. The Bushes, Clinton
and Obama tried to buy him
off. Trump’s the kind of guy we
need,” Baise said.
On trade, he said Trump
simply wants a fair and level
playing field.
“We ship $1.6 billion in
meat to Japan with a 37 per-
cent Japanese tariff and we hit
the point where the tariff goes
to 50 percent. We don’t do that
to their cars, TVs and phones,”
he said.
and having a beautiful herd.”
Following John Schil-
der’s death, at the age of 64,
one of his sons, B.J. Schilder,
took over the responsibility
of running the family dairy,
which has 1,750 milking
cows.
John Schilder was select-
ed for the honor by a com-
mittee of other dairymen and
members of the industry.
“There’s really no great-
er award in life than to be
honored by your peers,” said
Buhl dairyman John Brubak-
er, a member of the selection
committee who knew Schil-
der for more than 20 years.
Brubaker said Schilder
was not one to seek the pub-
lic eye, “But John had a heart
of gold and he was the first
one on the scene to help a
neighbor or someone in the
industry in need.”
Brubaker said Schilder’s
involvement in his commu-
nity and willingness to help
neighbors or other producers
was the reason he was se-
lected, more so than for his
involvement with various
groups or individual profes-
sional achievements.
“There are a lot of things
in life that are more import-
ant than production awards
and that type of thing,”
he said. “It came down to
… how John gave back to
the community and to the
dairy industry as a whole.
He’s very deserving of the
award. He represents every-
thing our industry is look-
ing for.”
Brubaker, who recounted
spending many lunch hours
with Schilder cracking jokes
“and solving the world’s
problems,” said his friend
was well liked in his commu-
nity and the dairy industry.
“I don’t think John had
any enemies,” he said. “Ev-
erybody loved John.”
Speaker: Dairymen need to be
able to adapt to rapid changes
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
BOISE — Dairymen
and industry leaders need
to acquire the skills and
knowledge that will enable
them to remain relevant in a
world that is being rapidly
changed by technological
innovation.
Artificial intelligence,
automation,
algorithms
and large amounts of data
are causing changes in the
business and consumer
world that could threaten to
overwhelm producers who
aren’t ready for them, key-
note speaker Mike Walsh
told several hundred Idaho
dairymen during the annual
Dairy West conference last
week.
“We have to be ready to
re-imagine ... how to oper-
ate,” said Walsh, CEO of
Tomorrow, an innovation
research lab.
He said the same thing
that has made a dairy busi-
ness successful until now
“could be exactly what un-
dos you in the future if you
are not prepared to adapt.”
He said a lot of high-pro-
file tech money is flowing
into food innovation and
“the same approaches that
have revolutionized tech-
nology will change food
processing. There is a new
era coming. We have to pre-
pare for that.”
Courtesy Dairy West
Keynote speaker Mike Walsh
tells Idaho dairymen during the
annual Dairy West conference
in Boise Nov. 9 that techno-
logical innovation is changing
the world and the food industry
rapidly and they need to be
ready to adapt to these chang-
es to remain competitive.
Walsh said algorithms
will change retail markets
and the way producers in-
teract with customers and
he noted that, “Your chil-
dren will be the first gener-
ation to be raised in part by
artificial intelligence.”
“Facial
recognition
will change the dynamics
of society,” he said, and
self-driving cars will result
in “continuous, high-vol-
ume fresh food delivery
into homes.”
Walsh said technology
will start to become more
invisible and basically be
built into our bodies.
He said the entire food
chain is about to get dis-
rupted by new technology,
data and social media and
producers have to re-think
conventional approaches to
food and agriculture.
Dairy West CEO Kar-
ianne Fallow told Capital
Press the world is chang-
ing rapidly and Walsh was
invited to speak at the con-
vention “to give our dairy
farmers some exposure to
that. I think that helps them
understand the world they
live in today and the world
that faces them for the fu-
ture.”
If dairy businesses are
going to remain competi-
tive in the future, they have
to be ready and able to
adapt, she said.
“What I’m hearing from
the farmers is that there is
a mix of excitement about
it and fear,” Fallow said. “I
keep reminding them that
awareness is the first step.
If they’re aware, then they
can prepare to do business
in this new world.”
Those future technologi-
cal innovations might seem
scary, she said, but they
present a lot of opportunity
“if you can keep your finger
on the pulse and not just re-
act to it, but really try to be
out ahead of it.”
he said.
Aided by unfair subsidies,
Canadian milk processors are
increasing production, Bailey
said. Canadian milk, even af-
ter traveling long distances, is
arriving at the Mexican bor-
der cheaper than U.S. prod-
ucts, he said.
Bailey said Darigold mem-
bers invested $97 million to
upgrade the cooperative’s
processing plant in Sunny-
side, Wash., to compete for a
share of the world’s market
for skim-milk powder.
“We’ve done this on our
own. You can imagine how
frustrated our dairy fam-
ily farmers are,” he said.
“Canada is making simi-
lar investments, with help
from the government to en-
gineer a price system that
undercuts us in the global
marketplace. It’s extremely
frustrating.”
Dairy
Markets
Lee Mielke
Dairy prices
continue to
undulate
By LEE MIELKE
For the Capital Press
C
ME dairy prices are
on a roller coaster
again. Block cheddar
fell to $1.6025 per pound
last Wednesday, the lowest
price since Sept. 21, 2017,
then jumped 11 1/4-cents
Thursday, and closed Friday
at $1.71, down a half-cent on
the week and 17 1/2-cents be-
low a year ago.
The barrels dipped to
$1.70 last Tuesday, then
gained a nickel Thursday, and
finished Friday at $1.7525,
up 3 3/4-cents on the week, a
quarter-cent below a year ago,
and an inverted 4 1/4-cents
above the blocks.
The blocks inched up a
quarter-cent Monday, only to
give it back Tuesday, return-
ing to $1.71.
The barrels dropped
5 1/4-cents Monday and
stayed there Tuesday, at
$1.70.
Midwestern cheese pro-
ducers report that sales are
steady to slower as the hol-
idays approach, according
to Dairy Market News. Dis-
counted milk prices were re-
ported again, as loads ranged
from $1 under to $1 over
Class III.
Western cheesemakers re-
port solid domestic demand
and some export interest.
With plentiful milk available,
a number of processors are
running at or near full capac-
ity. Stocks are heavier than
normal.
Cash butter fell to $2.18
per pound Wednesday, the
lowest price since May 10,
then rallied and closed Friday
at $2.2550, up 2 1/4-cents on
the week and 24 1/2-cents
above a year ago, with 50 cars
trading last week.
It gave up a half-cent Mon-
day, only to gain 3 cents Tues-
day and climb up to $2.28.
Cream to churns is be-
coming more available
ahead of the holidays.
Bulk butter sales are
picking up as prices have
steadily declined in recent
weeks.
Midwest contacts point
to declining EU butter pric-
es and suggest price trends
domestically are mirroring
European slides.
Western contacts report
that butter prices are currently
good but still lower compared
to last year at this time. Butter
production is active as cream
is readily accessible.
However, to better manage
inventories and production,
some butter manufacturers
are putting off churning until
after Christmas and shipping
cream to Mexico.
Cash Grade A nonfat
dry milk closed Friday at
72 1/4-cents per pound, up a
quarter-cent on the week but
15 1/2-cents below a year
ago.