The Value of Building a Dairy Tribe
Winter came to Southwest Virginia this year. For the past several years, things have been mild with little to no snow events.
However, in January, we had snow and ice that took the power out at the farm for four days. Then, in the middle of February we had another storm that had trees falling over the roads and power lines. This time the power was out for five days.
We are lucky that we have tractors and generators to prepare for and manage outages, though it is an added stress in an already stressful time. I slept with one ear open listening to that generator all night long. There is nothing worse than running out of fuel in the middle of the night.
But there is a bonus to bad weather and that is seeing the strength of a community. We have cultivated relationships with our neighbors, and they know in these times of stress that the lights will be on at Bowmont Dairy because the cows must get milked. So at least twice a day, there is a place to get water, charge a phone or just warm up.
I recently saw a reel posted on Instagram that talked about having your “tribe” surround you in times of trouble. But the person also pointed out that if you don't take time to build your tribe, you won’t have one to support you when you need it.
Being part of a community takes work. Many times, the connections are fun and rewarding but there are other times that are tedious and not fully enjoyable. There sometimes are community members that may make you wonder, ‘why are they here? What value do they bring?’ But in times of need, the effort of community building shines through.
Maybe I'm a little late to the game but I'm finding out that many in my community do not know their neighbors. They haven’t done the work of building their tribe. So, when our ice event happened, there were many who had no one to ask for help or a neighbor who could provide much-needed water. The time of an emergency is not the time to start the building process.
I see our dairy checkoff as another critical community that farmers are part of. When we work together across the national and local programs, we are depositing positive inputs into the community bank. We look around and see what each part is adding for the good of the whole and how each organization has its own unique strengths and needs.
Some regions of the country may have a lot of milk and other areas may have a larger population. One state and regional checkoff team may have a great program for an underserved population that could translate across the country. The more we build our checkoff community, the more we will surround ourselves with what we need.
I have two examples that show how the checkoff is building its place within the dairy tribe. First is the International Dairy Foods Association’s (IDFA) annual Dairy Forum that was held in January. IDFA is a great partner to the checkoff and its meeting allowed our leadership and farmers to interact with processors to share ideas, resources and perspectives. This was a valuable deposit in the dairy community bank.
The second example is the ongoing work of the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy that farmers founded through our checkoff in 2008. We understood then that our industry is stronger when we work together across the dairy value chain to gather our collective input, resources and expertise to address issues and opportunities that matter to our category, and the dairy buyers and consumers we serve.
Today, the Innovation Center is a robust pre-competitive forum that convenes hundreds of members of the dairy community, all committed to contributing to the long-term viability of our industry. The organization is led by a board of chief executives and chairs of dairy companies and associations and the farmer cooperatives and processors on the board represent about 65 percent of U.S. milk production.
Relationships cultivated through IDFA and the Innovation Center are how we continue building our tribe.
This is what makes us stronger and ultimately is how our checkoff dollars work harder and more efficiently for us.
