Farmer Funded Dairy Export Program Revisited

The Board of Directors for the National Milk Producers Federation recently came together to talk about increasing export opportunities for U.S. dairy by tweaking the organization's Export Assistance Program.

“The future direction of our Export Assistance Program, which has been called Cooperatives Working Together, that was actually created at a March board meeting back in 2003 so 22 years ago, and we've been discussing here in the past year how to rebrand it, relaunch it, refocus it in 2025 and beyond. So that's one of the things that we're discussing.”

That is Chris Galen, Senior Vice President and Member Services and Governance with the National Milk Producers Federation. He says, while he may not know yet what it will look like, he is sure interest remains in farmer funded export help.

“I think there's a lot of interest in continuing to have a farmer funded export program. So the purpose of CWT over the years was to help us pool resources within the dairy farm community to allow us to help develop additional export markets and help make us dairy products competitive in overseas markets. We're going to call that program something else here in the future, and really come up with a good plan to allow us to do more here in the mid-2020s, and beyond. So that's something that's on the table here for our board of directors to discuss. I think there won't be a final action until our next board meeting, which is in June.”

National Milk’s, Chris Galen.