America’s dairy industry continues to face a number of different challenges—including a lack of farm labor.
“A lot of our problem is we’ve got a lot of issues trying to secure our workforce,” says Brian Rexing, who was elected as the new Chairman of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) during their Joint Annual Meeting on November 10.
He’s also a dairy producer who owns and operates New Generation Dairy near Owensville in southern Indiana.
He tells Michigan Ag Today that the biggest policy issue facing dairy producers is the need for Farm Labor reform.
“We probably need to educate a lot of the lawmakers in our area of what our workforce looks like. We are not seasonal. We are every season. We are 365 days a year, 7 days a week, and we need to skilled workforce, and that skilled labor takes time to train and we want this workforce safe,” says Rexing.
The threat of foreign animal diseases—such as New World Screwworm and the H5N1 strain of bird flu impacting dairy cattle—are also top-of-mind for dairy producers.
“We had this conversation with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last week, and she had told us a lot of things that are in place. That gives us a lot of comfort in that there is a lot of protection that we have, and they are really watching this closely,” says Rexing.
“I think communication is most important when it comes to foreign animal diseases. We should communicate facts, and we don’t live in fear. I feel really good that we’ve been educated on this. It’s a scary thing when you think about it, but knowing what we’re all doing on the back side of it, I feel really good about it,” he says.
Rexing adds that the organization will continue to push lawmakers to pass an updated Farm Bill.
“This Farm Bill seems like it’s a can we keep kicking down the road,” he says. “We’ve had some subtle changes in it, that I think will help benefit farmers, but it just seems like such a struggle to get a Farm Bill reintroduced and passed, and we don’t quite understand it. That’s something that will be working on to try to secure our future.”
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CLICK BELOW to watch Hoosier Ag Today’s profile of Brian Rexing and his dairy farm, New Generation Dairy near Owensville, Indiana, from Feb. 2021:
