Information is power, and if there was one overarching message from last Thursday’s meeting of the Dairy Policy Action Coalition (DPAC), it was to press on from all angles with a primary focus on defining the markets and improving the transparency of them. This was a common thread in DPAC’s dairy producer survey results, as well as the comments and insights offered by a panel of market experts during the coalition’s milk pricing workshop.
By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, March 19, 2010
LANCASTER, Pa.—Two panels, eight speakers, 20 dairy producers—hailing from Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Kentucky, and Tennessee—along with a handful more on conference call from the East, Midwest and West… DPAC spent five hours distilling a wide range of facts, analysis, ideas and proposals into four achievable goals, while continuing their quest for information on other possible action items during the board meeting and milk pricing workshop at the Farm and Home Center in Lancaster, Pa. on Thursday, March 11.
After the fast-paced daylong workshop and board business meeting, a thoughtful outline of forward action emerged. Much ground was covered and much was learned, and at the end of the day, the dairy farmer board members of DPAC elected to put their primary focus on “achievable goals” and to develop a timetable and game-plan to influence not only congressional leaders and decision makers, but also to influence other influencers.
While the coalition’s focus Thursday was on developing a unified voice for long term pricing reform, supply management proposals were also presented and discussed.
But as vice-chair Rob Barley said at the outset: “Our focus today is on milk pricing. Supply management is part of that, and we have a panel addressing it here today, but we want this meeting to kickoff the work of our supply management action group as they sift through it.”
The milk pricing workshop was organized by DPAC’s milk pricing action group chaired by Barley, who served as the workshop moderator. “Our goal today is finding out what we have total agreement on,” said Barley. “We want to identify the things we can begin to have Denny Wolff contact the right people to get happening. We also want to identify the things we have consensus on and the things we need more information about.”
The DPAC board did conclude the day asking themselves two questions: “Do we believe the pricing system must be addressed before or along with our consideration of some form of growth management?” And, “Do we want to work on ‘fixing’ the current system or to visualize a brand new system?”
After discussion, they agreed unanimously to move forward aggressively on four key components of milk pricing, while they keep working on supply management in committee.
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