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Friday, May 7, 2021 CapitalPress.com 11 Dairy Subscribe to our weekly dairy or livestock email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters Dairy processors share lessons learned in pandemic with product that wasn’t meant to be held, and what are we going to do with this milk?” he said. Processors pivoted and did things they hadn’t done before such as freezing mozzarella in bulk and shifting to products that could be cured instead of held as fresh cheeses, he said. “They switched their make pro- cedures. They switched their prod- uct mix. And they looked for new markets,” he said. Some cheese makers found new markets in retail and the frozen pizza industry. “So that ability to pivot in the marketplace was another early fi nd- ing. And what struck me as I look back on last year is how quickly these things happened,” he said. By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press Dairy producers dumping milk in the spring of 2020 in the early days of the pandemic made head- lines across the country. But dairy processors also had their share of challenges, which they say continue. “That fi rst month, really late March and into April was a time of complete upheaval in the mar- kets,” said John Umhoefer, exec- utive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association. Foodservice sales dropped off right away, and cheese processors were getting phone calls from dis- tributors saying they weren’t tak- ing any product, he said during the Associated Press File Wheels of cheese age at the Emmi Roth USA production plant in Monroe, Wis. Processors describe the pandemic as “prob- lem whack-a-mole.” latest “DairyLivestream” webinar. “Product backed up immedi- ately last spring in the dairy indus- try. And so the fi rst learning people had was what are we going to do GF 102 / 1002 SERIES Global dairy market demands sustainability By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press The U.S. Dairy Export Council works for dairy farmers and the dairy indus- try to open markets for U.S. dairy products worldwide. But it’s not just about mar- ket access, it’s also about reputation. With today’s focus on sustainability, that narrative has to include U.S. dairy’s environmental stewardship goals. A lot of folks around the world, and sometimes even in the U.S., have a dated image of dairy, said Krista Harden, president and CEO of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. “They don’t see that modern farmer today, that commitment to technol- ogy, that one who makes investment in science and is making changes on their farms every day to make sure they’re more produc- tive, but they’re also more effi cient,” she said during the latest “Dairy Defi ned” podcast. Those farmers are also caring about natural resources, water use, where their feed comes from — all the diff erent elements of a farm, she said. “So, I really think that part of what we’ve got to do is make sure that we’re a little more transparent. We talk about what we do. We talk about what we don’t know,” she said. Admitting that U.S. dairy doesn’t have all the answers can be a hard thing to do, and it can make farm- Krysta ers feel vul- Harden nerable, she said. “We have to say, ‘we don’t have all the answers today, but we’re committed to fi nding them’ and that we are going to fi nd them. We are going to work to make sure that we do,” she said. “That’s the story I want to make sure that the rest of the world understands, and sees U.S. dairy as a leader when it comes to sustain- ability,” she said. Throughout the chain, the U.S. dairy industry is committed to this set of goals and has the opportu- nity to be able to do that, she said. “We are productive, we are effi cient, we are an eff ec- tive partner. That’s what we’ve got to continue to tell and to help us really explain to our custom- ers and to consumers,” she said. The stated goal of the United Nations Food Sys- tems Summit is to radically change how food is pro- duced, processed and con- sumed, she said. That should make peo- ple wake up and think “we better be involved and we need to make sure that U.S. dairy’s voice is heard and understood,” she said. Rising feed prices squeeze dairy farmers By LEE MIELKE For the Capital Press U .S. dairy farmers are feeling the squeeze. Average feed costs are up more than $5 per hundredweight com- pared to a year ago, accord- ing to the April 23 Dairy and Food Market Analyst. “A low-cost dairy farmer that broke-even at $15 per cwt milk in 2020 will now need $20 to make money,” the DFMA stated. “That means many milk producers, especially those that are buying spot feed and are receiving a milk price that is close to Class IV, are deep in the red.” Margin still slipping A small rise in the all milk price could not off set sharply rising feed costs and USDA’s latest Ag Prices report shows the March milk feed ratio at 1.75, down from 1.78 in Febru- ary, and compares to 2.24 in March 2020. The index is based on the current milk price in rela- tionship to feed prices for a dairy ration consisting of 51% corn, 8% soybeans and 41% alfalfa hay. In other words, one pound of milk could only purchase 1.75 pounds of dairy feed of that blend in March. The U.S. All-Milk price averaged $17.40 per hun- Some cheese makers switched from one cheese to another just days after states and restaurants started shutting down, he said. The cheese distribution market was also in chaos. Contracts went from year-long and six months to monthly, then biweekly and then weekly, he said. That shift is unprecedented, and it’s continuing, he said. There’s a tighter pipeline between milk coming in and product going out, and any disruption is magnifi ed. “Just the slightest hiccup at a good-sized cheese plant these days can cause a ripple eff ect across the entire milk shed,” he said. Bryan Weller, director of pro- curement and sourcing for Agri- Mark, described the last year as a “problem whack-a-mole.” The foodservice shutdown halted demand for the coopera- tive’s cultured products such as sour cream, which has no shelf life and can’t be frozen or aged. “Luckily we’ve got a balance between foodservice and retail, but there were certain lines we had to shutter,” he said. There just wasn’t demand for products such as 10-pound loaves of cheese. In addition, the pan- demic brought a forecast roller coaster, he said. After the holidays, February and March are kind of tumbleweed months for 8 ounce bars of cheese. But the pandemic brought a second Christmas demand, he said. 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