11/23/07 Turning unmet dairy demand into sales

US dairy producers can have a better future if unmet demand is turned into sales. That's what the CEO of Dairy Management Inc Tom Gallagher believes. As manager of the dairy checkoff he says the dairy industry has to move away from a production driven mentality to a consumer driven one. GALLAGHER "Get the consumer what they want. Because farmers are in the unfortunate position that they're often told that they produce too much milk. And yet there's 15 billion pounds of demand that are documented that there's not enough milk supply for." Gallagher says thanks to the dairy checkoff they're delivering milk in plastic containers to 60 thousand food service outlets and more than nine thousand schools. But it doesn't stop there. GALLAGHER "There's other opportunities in different styles of cheeses. Hispanic style cheeses that we can offer in this country and it will increase obviously the cheese utilization for us." Dairy Management Inc chairman Paul Rovey who is an Arizona dairyman says innovation is the key to their success. ROVEY "Innovation is part of changing the products, of making the availability, of packaging. That's where we will have our opportunity of gaining sales and gaining increased consumption." Rovey and Gallagher made their comments at a recently completed meeting of a thousand dairy producers in Orlando, Florida. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott