November 8, 2025 • 43 mins
Protein seems to be everywhere these days, with brands from Starbucks to Pepsi jumping on the trend. But the obsession with protein may have started earlier — with a humble dairy product that defied the broader decline in US milk consumption. Fairlife, which uses a specialized filtering process to boost protein and cut sugar and lactose in its milk products, helped spark the modern protein craze that’s unfolded alongside the rise of Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs. Since Coca-Cola acquired the brand in 2020, Fairlife has become one of the company’s biggest growth drivers. Yet its success also highlights deeper challenges facing the American dairy industry, where per capita milk consumption continues to fall. So how did Fairlife buck the trend? And what does its story reveal about the future of US dairy? On this episode, we speak with Corey Geiger, lead dairy economist at CoBank.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Allowhite.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
And I'm Jill.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Why isnt thal Joe? You're a Jim person? Aren't you
notice I did not say Jim Burrow.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah that's right. Let's say thank you. Aspirationally, I do
go to the gym regularly. I don't go to the
gym regular enough to see a difference. I think because
I'm at the stage of life for like every day
I'm getting a little bit closer to death, and so
I'm like holding serve. I'm like sort of holding at
the same So like I no progress, but maybe I'm
not regressing.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
But yes, I still think if you go to the
gym regularly, you're a Jim person. Okay, Yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm gonna have less shame about it.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Okay, here's my question. Have you noticed the drinking habits
of some of your fellow Jim people. Have you noticed
anyone walking around with bottles of milk?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I have? I mean I still see more people with
like the energy drinks milk, but yeah, I've definitely seen it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I think, like back in the day. You know, you
had these guys. I think some of them still do
with actual like people who try to drink a gallon
of milk in a day. There's that famous guy. He
has a book called Starting Strength. He's like a cult
guru within the Barbelle world. Whose name I'm blanking on.
I think he's a big like drink a bunch of
(01:31):
milk guy.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
If you're serious about it, you got to mix raw
eggs in with the milk. That's what I say.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You do.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Have you done that? No?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I haven't, although I did when I triple fractured my
foot when I was in Hong Kong, and I did
have a doctor who advised me to drink a lot
of milk to build up the calcium and heal the foot. Anyway,
we're getting slightly off topic.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
One of the milk brands that you see a lot
in gyms is something called fair Life.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, I've seen it, and I actually literally like had
never thought about what it is or but yes, I
had seen this brand.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, so I don't know that much about it, but
I first got kind of interested in the company reading
Austin Ferrick's book Barrens. There's a whole chapter in there
about dairy barns and it's about fair Oaks, which turned
into fair Life. All I know about fair Life is
that Coke bought them. They had a big distribution deal
(02:23):
with Coke, and we know how important distribution is in
the beverage industry from our previous conversations on Celsius and
things like that. And it's turned into this phenomenon where
fair Life is this milk that's I guess supposed to
be healthier. It has more protein, it has less lactose
or no lactose I can't remember, which means you can
(02:43):
keep it in your fridge for like one hundred days,
which is actually I find that useful. So we should
talk about it because it's also kind of kicked off
this whole protein crazy.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Protein only got protein everywhere I know, I don't get it. Like, yes,
Starbucks they have these you can get this protein drinks.
I haven't tried them yet. I you know, when did
it become a crime to just eat normally? I get
I ate some eat and I ate some veggies and
occasionally eat some carbs and stuff like that and whatever.
But yeah, over time, it's like different macro nutrients trend, right,
(03:17):
So there was a while it's like good fats, right,
people are really into fats for a while, and then
it's like, oh, you need fermented stuff, so you know,
they's more for your gut health. But we're in like
a we're certainly in a protein bowl market right now.
People really want more protein because reasons.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, And what's interesting again about fair Life is it's
making a lot of money that's feeding into Coke bottom line.
Share price has gone up quite a bit, and it's
also at odds with basically everything else that's happening in
the dairy industry, where you know, prices tend to be
pretty low and have been kind of stuck in a
downward spiral for a long time. Profit margins are very
(03:56):
very thin, so this is an outlier.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
People are assuming less traditional dairy. I think a lot,
you know, at least I don't know how big is
it it is, but some of the quote alternative milks,
the almond milks of the world, the cashew milk, so
he milk's probably taking some yeah, plain old regular dairy.
No I ever talked on, by the way, number two milk.
I feel like everyone's either skim or fat. These days
(04:20):
because more of the sort of like polarization of society
that no one likes nice middle ground milk anymore. So
now apparently they want super high protein milk too.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
All right, So we have the perfect guest, yes to
discuss fair Life and the dairy industry in general. We're
going to be speaking with Corey Geiger. He is the
lead dairy economist with Cobank, which is a very big
lender to the industry, so really the perfect person to
speak to.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Corey.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
All thoughts, Well, I'm glad to be here Tracy and Joel.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So I'm going to start with the basic question what
differentiates fair life from traditional milk.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I think there's two big parts to this, protein and portability.
The portability is it's ultra pasteurized and uses aseptic packaging,
so that means it you can actually ship it without refrigeration.
And when you think about the dairy industry, the dairy
industry is the largest refrigerated food chain in the world. Really,
(05:18):
you think, as soon as we milk a cow and
we cool the milk, it's cooled in the truck to
the processing plant, and then traditional dairy products are refrigerated
all the way to the grocery store at a convenience store.
But the fair Life story and products like it now
are when you go to that aseptic packaging and altar
filtration until you open that bottle, it's got a lot
(05:40):
longer shelf life. Of course, once it's opened, you're at
the fourteen day clock starts ticking.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
This technology that allows you to store milk for a
long time without refrigeration. Is this something that's been understood
for a long time and now there's suddenly a demand
for this milk or is the technology relatively recent? And
then the industry is like, oh, we can because of
this technology, we can market and get people excited about
(06:09):
a new product that can take advantage of these capabilities.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Well, fair Life first came on the scene in twenty fourteen,
so it's been with us about a decade. But one
of the things that the team at fair Life had
to really perfect was this high temperature, short time pasturization,
so you're heating the milk up quick and then cooling
it quick. One of the things I like sharing is
that milk is nature's most perfect beverage. You talked about
(06:32):
it being a health beverage. If it's nature's most perfect beverage,
that also means it's a great place to grow bacteria.
So pasteurization. You know, over one hundred years ago, the
Pasteurized Milk Ordinance came about, and that set a national
standard so that a Wisconsin farmer could sell milk in
the Chicago market, or an upstate New York farmer could
(06:53):
sell milk into the New York City under the same
rules and standards. But going to this ultra the HTST
the high temperature short time pasteurization, Originally you kind of
got a burnt milk taste. So if you're a consumer
and you're tasting it, you're like, eh, it didn't hit
the mark. But now they perfected that process and you
(07:16):
really get the flavor that you've come to expect from
a dairy milk.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You mentioned having to sell into markets, and I'm not
quite sure why, but I was reading a book about
small scale farming from the nineteen fifties last night and
it was talking about if you're a small scale farmer
and you want to get into dairy, you have some options.
One option is you sell into a local market that's
very close to you, because you know you can't refrigerate
(07:41):
the milk for that long, or you sell to like
a cheese factory or something like that, and you can
go a little bit further, sell maybe more in bulk
that sort of thing. How big a deal was fair
Life's distribution deal with Coke in its success, This idea
that now you have a bed that can be shipped
(08:01):
over very very long distances, long timelines, and you have
Coke distributing it.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
I think it was huge when you really look at it.
If you look at the founders of the concept of
what became fair Life. Originally they were experimenting Mike and
Sue McCloskey with a product that they eventually called athletes
Milk Honey, and so they were looking at finding a
health beverage for consumers in that market. So there's one
(08:30):
thing to be innovative. Then it's distribution. And one of
the for me, I grew up on a sixth generation
Wisconsin dairy farmer, one of the obstacles always for milk
has been portability. You know, it's you have to have
this elaborate transportation system to move it. And I'm talking
beverage milk here, and that really overcame the situation with
(08:55):
what Fair Life has done with aseptic packaging and the
HSUT process to hype pastorization. It was game changing.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I think this is old news, but it used to
be the case that milk prices what's the deal they
were like set based on your distance from Oak Claire,
Wisconsin or something like that, because there was this premise like, oh,
we want milk very far away, and you sell to
your local market. And explained it that went away or something.
But why was Oa Claire, Wisconsin this sort of central
(09:25):
hub for a while of the index for pricing milk.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Explain that, yes, there's a number of reasons for it. Actually,
we'll start with a little dairy history. Up until about ten,
New York was the largest milk producing state in the
United States. Then that became Wisconsin, and obviously now America's
dairy Land is on the license plates Wisconsin. Actually, in
(09:51):
the eighteen late eighteen hundreds, a gentleman who became governor
of the state, William Dempster Hoartz, secured the first refrigerated
real car to ship Wisconsin to New York City in
the eighteen seventies, and today Wisconsin exports about ninety percent
of their milk production via cheese, and that export could
be the other forty nine states and certainly now around
(10:12):
the world. But because of all the cheese made in
Wisconsin and Minnesota, Well Claire was that kind of center
point between Wisconsin and Minnesota to establish a base price
for milk. That went away here in about two thousand
and we have a different system, but milk is still
highly regulated under Federal Milk Marketing Orders, which is really
(10:35):
what establishes milk prices.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Could you just real quickly explain one of these words.
What does that mean? Like it's regular because the prices
do fluctuate, So what does that mean that it's still
highly regulated?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Yeah, highly regulated means that Federal Milk Marketing Orders. There's
four classes of milk. Class one would be beverage milk.
That would be the traditional milk that you drink. And
when you come back to the Fair Life story and
you discussed that milk fluid milk sales have been flat,
but products like Fair Life and Core Power in those
(11:07):
are actually a mixture of fluid milk. In Class two,
products which traditionally have been scupable products like yogurt, ice
cream would be in there. Sour cream would be in there,
and then Class three I liked sharing little miss Tuffett
sat on her muffet eating her curds in waste of
Class three is cheese, curds and whey, and then Class
(11:29):
four products are butter and powder, and butt powder would
be non fat dry milk. But each of these classes
has different pricing mechanisms, and today beverage milk is priced
on the higher of Class three or class four. It
gets complicated, and that's why I call their very regulated.
(11:51):
But these orders came about in nineteen thirty seven. It
was an act of Congress and it was to ensure
the orderly marketing milk and ensure fluid milk in markets
that don't have a lot of dairy coves.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So one thing I learned from reading my old farming
book is that there are a lot of levers that
you can pull if you're again this is for small
scale farming, but there are levers you can pull to
boost profits. So maybe you're not going to make that
much from milk itself, but you know, you can sell
the calves for veal, or once the dairy production starts
(12:27):
going down with your cows, you can sell those, or
you can sell manure for fertilizer and things like that,
all these different levers. Can you talk a little bit
more about the actual business model of a dairy farm
and where money comes from nowadays, because I imagine it's
changed quite a bit.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
This is a dynamic space and from over. We'll talk
about the dairy farm in a second. But dairy right
now has eleven billion dollars of new plant investment in
the United States, and it's a number of categories, so
there's a lot of energy taking place in a lot
of investment. This is historic investment. When you get to
the dairy farm. Obviously, if you're a milking cows, your
(13:07):
number one revenue source is milk. I would say up
until five years ago, ninety percent of your income came
from milk, unless you were selling a lot of crops.
But one of the dynamic things that have changed, and
it's in the news a lot right now, is beef prices,
and every cow has a second career as a beef animal.
(13:28):
About five years ago, well I considered the dairy cow
the most researched animal on planet Earth. We know more
about her. We have over one hundred and twenty three
million records on her over the last one hundred years.
In two thousand and eight, the science of genomics came
into the industry. I was actually the first one to
write a public article about it. But what you do
(13:50):
is you take a DNA sample from the cow, you
run her profile, and you can compare it to all
this phenotypic data that one hundred and twenty three million
records about seventy percent accuracy, we can predict what that
baby calf will do as a cow, and that has
changed a lot of things in dairy. We are improving
(14:12):
butterfat and protein levels at paces we've never seen before.
And these days one out of four heifer calves, baby
calves that will eventually become cows, have a genomic test
run on them, and that has really changed things. Then
as that took place, gender sorted seamen came into the industry,
(14:33):
so we can they use lasers. They can sort out
the y chromosomes which make a bull calf, and with
about ninety to ninety five percent accuracy, produce a product
that makes dairy heffercalves. So dairy farmers are planning their replacements.
They're using science to predict the ones and that opened
a whole new door to use what we call beef breeds,
(14:57):
think angus, limousine, charlat that we breed those, we'd use
artificial insemination. The original AI and agriculture had artificial intelligence
to inseminate the cows, and dairy farmers are making more
money on that these days. So about five years ago,
back to Tracy's original question, a dairy farmer was making
(15:20):
about one dollar per hundred weight per hundred pounds of
milk equivalent from beef sales, and say a dairy farmer's
making eighteen to twenty, So it wasn't eighteen to twenty
dollars per hundred weight for milk. It wasn't a big deal.
But today that number has gone to four four fifty.
So we're generating a baby black heighted calf. An angus
calf that's destined for a feed lot eventually is selling
(15:42):
between twelve and eighteen hundred dollars right now, and so
it's a big revenue stream doesn't no matter what size
your farmers, everybody can play.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
So when you're talking about improving sort of butterfat and
so forth, what is going is it selective breeding? That
just means that you're more likely to get a baby
cow that has high levels of whatever you're looking for, like, what.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Is better production rate?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, what is the source of I guess higher yields.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
So I'm past president of Holstein Association USA, which is
the largest dairy breed organization in the world, and that
source is a bundle of metrics. We study a lot
of traits. Certainly the big two would be butterfat, well
big three would be butter fat, protein, and milk, but
we are also looking at mass titus, resistance or that
you know, the ability to combat and infection. In the
(16:48):
other we're looking for longevity, which as a trait we
call productive life, or even daughter pregnancy rate, which is
a fertility metric. So that's this bundle of better yields
from the cow and reduce costs from the standpoint of
healthcare and those kind of things. And right now, if
you use the best group of Holstein bulls or even
(17:10):
Jersey bulls on the next generation, each year, we're improving
genetics one hundred dollars per year. Prior to genomics that
number was like thirteen dollars. So this is like significant
improvement and using natural science and really doing a better job.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Sorry, I started laughing at the mastitis reference because it's hilarious.
It's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
No.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
One of the old timey solutions for this in that
old book was using a bicycle pump to inflate the
cows utters. Huh, So I'm guessing people don't do that
so much anymore.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
That is true, we do not do that any Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
What about you know you're talking about income that dairy
farms can generate. What's going on with the actual input
prices because it takes a lot, again from reading this book,
takes a lot of feed, a lot of hay, a
lot of grains to actually get these cows producing milk
and also up to size if you're going to sell
(18:12):
them for beef.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So the biggest costs on a dairy farm are feed
and labor. My wife's family was actually the first to
put robots in twenty five years ago in the United
States start milking their cow. So some farmers are using
robot technology, but that's not exactly mainstream at this point.
But look at the near term prices for feed soybean
(18:34):
and corn grain, certainly in LFELFA are some of the
core constituents. Those prices are down now that's a good
thing if you're a livestock producer, not a great thing
if you're a row crop farmer. The other thing, these days,
thirty seven percent of the US corn crop actually goes
to biofuels ethanol, so there's byproduct feeds there as well
(18:57):
as in the soybean space. We're making biodiesel and one
of the by products of that is soybean meals. So
the cow is a great recycler. In fact, that four
stomachs of the cow allow her to eat a lot
of by product feeds. And I've traveled I think I've
been to forty eight states covering the dairy industry.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
I've seen tomatoes and carrots that didn't make human grade
food in California get fed to cows. I've been in
Ohio where reject jelly from smuckers has been fed to cows.
I've been to Canada where a farmer plows out driveway
next door of the plant that makes biscuits for McDonald's
and the reject biscuits go into what is a total
(19:37):
mixed ration a TMR, So it's a big food blender
mixes up all the food and the cows get a
blended diet. So it's kind of a remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Honestly, a cow fed on McDonald's biscuit sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So great. It sounds like a cow is just an
amazing machine. All of these discarded food products go in
that people that there are no other use because most
of us don't have four stomachs. And then every year
the cows get better at production, or you get better
at producing higher producing cows. Sounds like a great business.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
It is remarkable. And that's why. Even though milk is
a product that is very consistent, every farm is different
and however they approach it. You know, there's very there's
similarities to it, but there's a lot of regional differences
as well.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Wait, okay, so cows might be amazing machines. Amazing machines.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, good machines.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Thank you. I had to get at least one pun
in there. But the dairy industry, we hear, has been challenged, right,
So consumption has been going down. I think I read
somewhere it's down forty percent in the US since nineteen
seventy five something like that. Profit margins are still pretty compressed.
Prices seem to be on basically it's a race to
(20:53):
the bottom, and so you've kind of seen a lot
of consolidation of the smaller farms into these big dairy conglomerates.
Is that this story there?
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Well, I want to back up first though. Dairy consumption
is actually at the highest level it's been in forty years,
and we measure that. We have some really good USDA
data on that. But if you look at your term,
you know, we started out talking about fair Life, that's
Coca Cola's newest one billion dollar brand. If you look
at yogurt year over a year, it's up almost ten percent.
(21:24):
One of the big stories in the yogurt category is
certainly Shabani and I would have half of the sales
of yogurt these days are Greek yogurt, which are high
protein yogurt. Another category that's been exploding. It's we made
Grandma's cottage cheese hip again, and cottage cheese is up.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The cottage cheese is great. I always thought it always
feels like it should have a moment more like Greek yogurt,
and it's like, oh, this is cottage cheese is year?
Is it finally happening?
Speaker 4 (21:52):
It is? And people can't make it fast enough. I
was actually talking to a dairy processor at Wisconsin Cheesemakers
just last week when it comes to yogurt, and one
of his customers said, can you get me more? And
he goes, well, not until next year, and he goes, well,
just send me whatever you can. It's those products are
(22:12):
very tight right now. And then cheese consumption is at
an all time high, actually at forty pounds per person
per year per capita. So those are some big growth areas.
What you're probably seeing Tracy, though, is the story on
fluid milk. In the nineteen seventies, the average American drank
thirty gallons a year, and now we're probably closer to
(22:33):
nineteen gallons. One of the things for fluid milk is
it's hitch to dry breakfast cereal compliments to one another,
and in fact, one third of all fluid milk it's
consumed on dry breakfast cereal, and that category has not
been going well. But then you flip over to these
the core power, which is really a high protein milkshake,
(22:56):
and that is not actually tracked in the fluid beverage
cat it's considered a different product. We have seen consolidation
in the dairy industry. There's fewer dairy farms each year.
But the interesting thing is I graduated college in nineteen
ninety five. While dairy farm numbers are down, the number
of dairy cows are the same, essentially about nine nine
(23:19):
point three million, but milk production from those cows is
up forty five percent during that time. It just speaks
to the efficiency of the dairy cow and what things
are taking place on a dairy farm.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
My intuition is correct that within the liquid milks category,
we've sort of everything in society has become so polarized,
and everyone loves extremes, and we see it in politics,
we see it everywhere. This is well known people. No
one likes the middle ground anymore. Within the liquid milk category,
has everyone sort of has gone to the extreme ends.
(23:55):
They want the high fat milk or the skim leaving
that good old two percent milk the missing middle.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
That's a very interesting question, Joe. What's taking place in
fluid milk? I three big trends protein so products like
fair Life. Another one is lactose free. A new milk
plant going up today will have membrane technology and to
do reverse osmosis. And about everybody on the new milks
are pulling out lactose. And you've got to remember about
(24:22):
one third of Americans are probably lactose and tolerant, about
one hundred and twenty million. So let's make a product
that they can enjoy. And then in the traditional milk categories,
you're absolutely right, whole milk is about the only one
that's growing right now, skim, which is basically fat free,
and the other percentages are down. You know, the dietary
(24:43):
guidelines for Americans that USDA and FDA do every five
years haven't really changed their guidance on fat. But there's
a lot of research out there that said the fats
saturated fats found in dairy and animal protein like beef
and pork and poultry, fish too, seafood, are actually good
(25:03):
for you. And so so there are people already voting
with their pocketbooks this category.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
One thing we learned from previous episodes on I Guess
Trendy Drinks of the Moment is the importance of shelf
placement in grocery stores. And I have to admit, when
I'm buying milk at a grocery store, I basically just
buy what's at eye level. I do buy whole milk though, Yeah,
that's the preference. But how important is placement for a
(25:29):
product like milk, which generally would be considered a staple
and perhaps doesn't have as much brand loyalty as some
other things.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Yeah, well, there's a reason in the grocery aisle. If
you look at if you walk through your grocery island
next time after listening to this podcast, dairy is often
in the back of the store because dairy is in
like over ninety five percent of households, so it's a
routinely purchased product, and that's part of the placement situation. Now.
(25:59):
About five years years ago, a lot of the plant
based beverages were making inroads, and those sales are actually
down now. People consumers, in my intuition, are looking for
clean labels and they want to see ingredients that they
can understand, and I think that's been part of the
changing tide in a dairy space as well. And it's
interesting when you look at it and you think about
(26:22):
we're just past a ten year anniversary now of Coca
Cola and Select Milk and Fair Life Partnership. Now there's
others that are looking into that space, you know, PepsiCo
has announced that they're going to have their Propel water
brand is going to have a clear protein in it
that has twenty grams of protein. And they're also reformulating
their muscle milk and they're going to have dairy based
(26:44):
protein in that category as well. I think when you
go to places like Costco or Walmart, dairy is just
not found in the dairy aisle anymore. It's shelf stable.
It could be in the health food section, it could
be in you know, all nutrition sections and those kind
of things. And so it's expanding beyond its traditional role
(27:06):
because of these high protein beverages. And also if you're
looking for calcium, some of these products are you know,
and one serving can get you fifty percent of that
as well.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
The way these trends change when it comes to macro nutrients,
you know, someone I saw a tweet or something and
there's like a fiber is going to be the new protein.
That's going to be the big thing everyone wants.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
We should encourage fiber. We should probably we're useful than
I mean, Americans consume a lot of protein already. I
don't know why we need more.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Apparently we need more, But does the industry, Like how
long does it take the industry to say, you know what,
this is a durable trend We're actually going to invest
in the processing space for this, because there's got to
be some risk. Consumers are very fickle Internet health influencers.
They may be onto something else by next year, like no,
(28:10):
you got to get whatever, you go back to low fat,
that's the new hot thing, etc. How do producers think
about their capital allocation budget when it comes to playing
on new trends within consumption.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well that's a large and big question. Yeah, and you
really look at the long term trends and where things
are going. Tracy's absolutely right. If you read some of
the research. Fiber probably will be the next follow up
the protein. I hear people talking about how do I
put a protein drink out there with fiber in it
and bundle the two together. You know, when I was
(28:47):
going to grade school, there was a cheese out there
called Mazzarella in the late mid nineteen seventies that was
only at a couple pounds per capita consumption, and now
it's the most consumed cheese, largely because of its relationship
with pizza. So these mega trends can reshape categories. You
know in the nineteen well, let's back up even a
(29:09):
little further. There was in the nineteen sixties there was
an organization called the Wisconsin Feeder Pig Cooperative. And how
in the heck would that be formed in Wisconsin when
I was the largest hog state. But what was happening?
We didn't have the technology going back to kurds and
Way making cheese and why we could make cheese, but
the byproduct was way, and in Way was protein, the
(29:32):
most complete amino acid known humanity. But cheesemakers were just
set in a farmer's home with it do something. Some
would spread it on fields, some would feed it the
baby pigs. Well, we learned the baby pigs would grow
so fast, so that Wisconsin Feeder Pig co Op started
shipping two to three million feeder pigs that I want
to be finished with porn and soybeans. Well, now we
(29:52):
can use these big dryers just using drying and harvest
that way in a lot cheese plants, not a lot.
All the new cheese plants are really going in with
a business model not only to make cheese, but to
capture the way weigh. Protein isolates are selling roughly at
ten dollars a pound, which is record high. And so
(30:13):
these business models that are taking place and the research
to build these eleven billion dollars A new plant investment
is really how do we make more out of milk?
I think you know collagens and colostrum, and now a
new one is lacto fare in, which is one of
the milk components that really helps reduce inflammation. There's some
(30:34):
research out there, you know, depending on the number you see,
there may be five thousand there, maybe six three hundred
somewhere in their unique molecules and milk. And we are
just beginning to research that, learning what parts we can
pull apart and help humans. And there's going to be
more and more in that space here in the coming years.
(30:54):
And that's all part of that investment strategy. What's going
to take place in the plant years away from some
of that.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
But so, one thing I know about farmers is they're
always complaining about something and no judgment there. I'm always
complaining about something too. Joe can attest to this, But
what are the current complaints that you're hearing the most
from dairy farms.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Well, right now, near term, ninety percent of milk in
the United States is priced on multiple component pricing. Dairy
farmers would see an mcpiece, so the ninety percent of
that pricing is butterfat and protein. Well, if you look
at protein and butterfat is two nascars on the racetrack.
From two thousand to two thousand and fourteen, the protein
(31:37):
nascar always won, and then as consumers started demanding more fat,
and remember the flavor is in the fat, butterfat won
eight of the last ten years. But right now we've
made so much butterfat that butter prices are down, not
only in the US but worldwide. So that's changed the
milk checks. So that would be if you went to
a dairy meeting right now to be like, that's what's
(32:00):
milk prices down here in the last sixty days. That's
one issue that is near on top of mind. The
other thing would be labor. Of course, it takes a
lot of people to run a dairy farm, and the
US dairy industry and a lot of farmers Americans don't
like doing dirty jobs when it comes down to it.
(32:22):
On weekends, I work on our family farm. But these
are still just like building homes. This is very hands
on process here and that would be another issue that
would be top of mind dairy farmers, and you'll always
get a good conversation on the weather. Farmers in general.
Are we always beholding to Mother Nature?
Speaker 3 (32:42):
It's interesting you didn't say trade, but partly like I
get the impression that there's always a million little lawsuits
going on between Wisconsin farmers and their friends on the
other side of the border about some rules of origin
and they're not buying enough this. It seems like this
is one of those things that transcends every administration. They
(33:04):
try to hammer it out, but they're always like sort
of arguing over details. You're not fulfilling that as you're
supposed to let in this mini galllenge. You didn't what
are the core persistent issues that American dairy farmers feel
is unfair or unideal about I guess our dairy trading
relationship with Canada.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Joe. That's a great point, and I should have put
it in my list. Trade is top of mind. In
nineteen ninety five, the US was essentially a non player
in the global dairy exports, and that's the year that
NAFTA came about. Actually, NAFTA came about nineteen ninety four,
and then nineteen ninety five the US Dairy Export Council
(33:44):
was formed. And these days about seventeen percent of the
US milk supply, or one out of seven tankers of milk,
are actually exported as either dairy products or ingredients around
the world, so it's very important to dairy. We're actually
having a strong export year, but largely because US dairy
products and ingredients were lower than the other two major competitors.
(34:08):
So the EU the twenty seven countries of the European Union,
are the world's largest dairy exporters. They roughly export twenty
percent of their milk production. Then the small and mighty
nation of New Zealand is the number two export They
have five million cows and five million people, roughly in
the size of Minnesota and Wisconsin, so one third of
(34:29):
their gross domestic product comes from dairy. If you read
Auckland paper, you would hear dairy at least weekly. And
then comes to US. The US is number one export
customer is our friends south of the border in Mexico.
So the US is about a nine billion dollar export
market on dairy. Mexico is at about two billion of that.
(34:52):
Now Canada is a discussion to itself. Canada's milk supply
is largely governed by quota system, so dairy farmers up
there purchased the right to sell milk, and in fact,
on a Canadian dairy farm, the quota is worth more
than everything else. It's worth more than the cow's it's
worth more than the land, it's worth more in the
(35:14):
equipment to make that work. You can have a lot
of imports come in, so there are some things that
we send north to the border, butter being one of them.
But when you hear the headlines right now, of course
there are other things that were agreed upon in the
trade agreement the last time, the US Mexico Canada trade agreement.
In one of those largely centers on protein.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Surprisingly, that's interesting. So if you look into your crystal
ball for the future in the next ten years, look
at the dairy industry, what's going to be most important
in terms of the success of a dairy farm or profitability?
Is it technology? Is it scale and consolidation, is it
(35:55):
perhaps branding and specialization or efficiencies in a way you're
breaking down milk into all these various products, or all
of the above.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I think that's a two part question. Because you got
the dairy farmers or dairy producers, and then you have
the dairy processors. We're going to have to use more
and more technology on the dairy farms. I think, coming
back to the cow, when dairy farmers invest in genetics,
those genetics are additive and they're so important and if
this protein booms continues, genetics is one of the only
(36:28):
ways to improve it. We don't have a lot of
feeding practices in the toolbox in that regard, certainly AI
and technology and I'm going to say artificial intelligence here
for the farmers out there, listening will be very crucial
into this, and we're going to have to use more
technology and find ways to use robotic technology. We're already
doing some of that and rotary milking parlors. So a
(36:50):
rotary parlor would be like a merry go round that
the cows go on. But when we do milking preparation
right now, some robots are putting on teat dip or
a sanitizer before we milk that cow, which is important.
So those are some areas the space, and a lot
of dairy farmers are also crop farmers, especially growing corn
silage where alfalfa would be two big staples, and you know,
(37:14):
the whole space on farm equipment would be another area.
When it comes to the processing plants. You know, some
of these new and modern processing plants have a lot
of stainless steel and those costs are going up. But
it's that investment in technology, investment in it. You know,
all this ultra filtered milk that we've been talking about too.
(37:34):
You know, I was just in a plant. There's almost
nine thousand filters in there. It's very it's a very
clean and good process, but it takes a lot of investment.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
It's materials heavy, materials heavy environment.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
All right, Corey. Thank you so much for coming on
all thoughts that we're going to have to leave it there.
But that was so much fun. Love talking about milk clicking.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah, that was fantastic. I learned a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Thank you, Joe and Tracy.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I will say after that conversation, I'm not I'm not
craving liquid milk, but I'm craving I'm craving cheese.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah, I'm craving cheese right now. And butter like a
nice piece I want a piece of bread, would just
like go crazy with the butter, butter and salt. Yeah,
butter and salt.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
I love that it's lunchtime.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, I know, we have a yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I really did learn a lot conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
No, that was really helpful. This is one of those markets,
like many egg markets, I think, where there's clearly a
heavy market component and clearly a heavy regulatory component as well,
and so I think those are some of the hardest
for me to wrap my head around. I didn't realize,
for example, that in Canada that you buy the right
to sell dairy, and so that just that right to
(38:56):
sell into the market becomes a very valuable asset in
its own right. I thought that was a great conversation.
I'm also fascinated by the fact that maybe it's just
day one in terms of learning about all of the
useful molecules in that can be separated out and have
some He mentioned a few that I had never heard of.
But the idea that there's just more science there to
(39:17):
be done on learning what is milk or what is
in it that could be a value A lot of
interesting stuff there.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
No the efficiencies and the values you can ring out
of a single product. The cow kind of amazing.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
So yeah, again, I'm going to go back to that
book just because it's fresh in my mind. But one
of the things that was saying is if you feed
the cow is a bunch of corn, then they spit
out corn kernels in their manure. Oh and you can
apparently actually feed pigs on the half eaten corn kernels.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's truly discussion in the manure.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
I know. But it's efficient, Joe.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's interesting. I think, what do you call it? Mixed something,
something that you could just like, oh, we're going to
have some old biscuits and we're going to put some
tomatoes together, and it doesn't matter. The cow's stomach is
going to be able to digest it like that is
a really incredible machine, and it is a good reminder
of how extraordinary nature and biology are from efficiency standpoint.
That if you wanted to build a machine that could
(40:15):
separate do the equivalent of four different stomachs, et cetera,
it would be such an extraordinarily costly machine. And nature
has solved this for us via hundreds of millions of
years of evolution. It's just a very fascinating thing to
think about some of these how efficient these processes have
gotten and then what scientists can do when they learn
(40:36):
more about how they work.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
The cows are efficient themselves. I'm still amazed at some
of the labor inputs that go into this. So, you know,
cows producing milk have to produce calves, so you have
to inseminate them. You have to take the calves away
from the cows so that the cows will produce milk
that you can sell. And then you have to teach
the cows to like drink from either a bucket or
(40:59):
an artificial utter or whatever. There's a lot you have
to do.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I'm not sure. I may have mentioned it once or twice.
When I was growing up in the Midwest, my grandmother,
her husband was a dairy and fruit farmer in the
middle of Michigan, and he was very big in the
local sort of dairy board or whatever it was, et cetera.
And when I was younger, I thought that was so boring,
And now I'm like, it's so many I wish you
(41:24):
were still around. Yeah, I wish I have so many.
Quite like, if I hear around these days, it'd be
one of those things where I would like visit him
and I would like ask him two hours of questions
about the dairy. You have him on odd Lots like
one of those people who will answer any of my questions.
She would have. He was a very patient, good guy.
And I always feel like, man, I wish a little
bit older whatever, because that would have been a very
(41:44):
good resource.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah. I feel the same way. My granddad was a
cattle rancher in Texas, and he died before I got
a chance to ask him all these questions. All I
remember from his cow industry is that he used to
name some of the cows after me and my cousin,
yeah them, and he'd tell us like, Tracy number three
is no longer with us, So there we go.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
That's fun, all right.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
This has been another episode of the odd Bots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Alloway and I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at
the Stalwart. Follow our producers Carbon Rodriguez at Carmen armand
dash O Bennett at Dashbot and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks.
From our Oddlows content, go to Bloomberg dot com slash
odd Lots, where the daily newsletter and all of our
episodes and you can chat about all of these topics
twenty four seven in our discord discord dot gg slash
(42:33):
odd lots.
Speaker 2 (42:34):
And if you enjoy adlots, If you like it when
we do these agricultural episodes, then please leave us a
positive review on your favorite podcast platform. And remember, if
you are a Bloomberg subscriber, you can listen to all
of our episodes absolutely ad free. All you need to
do is find the Bloomberg channel on Apple Podcasts and
follow the instructions there. Thanks for listening in
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Allowhite.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
And I'm Jill.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Why isnt thal Joe? You're a Jim person? Aren't you
notice I did not say Jim Burrow.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Yeah that's right. Let's say thank you. Aspirationally, I do
go to the gym regularly. I don't go to the
gym regular enough to see a difference. I think because
I'm at the stage of life for like every day
I'm getting a little bit closer to death, and so
I'm like holding serve. I'm like sort of holding at
the same So like I no progress, but maybe I'm
not regressing.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
But yes, I still think if you go to the
gym regularly, you're a Jim person. Okay, Yeah, that's impressive.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
I'm gonna have less shame about it.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Okay, here's my question. Have you noticed the drinking habits
of some of your fellow Jim people. Have you noticed
anyone walking around with bottles of milk?
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I have? I mean I still see more people with
like the energy drinks milk, but yeah, I've definitely seen it.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
I think, like back in the day. You know, you
had these guys. I think some of them still do
with actual like people who try to drink a gallon
of milk in a day. There's that famous guy. He
has a book called Starting Strength. He's like a cult
guru within the Barbelle world. Whose name I'm blanking on.
I think he's a big like drink a bunch of
(01:31):
milk guy.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
If you're serious about it, you got to mix raw
eggs in with the milk. That's what I say.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
You do.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Have you done that? No?
Speaker 2 (01:38):
I haven't, although I did when I triple fractured my
foot when I was in Hong Kong, and I did
have a doctor who advised me to drink a lot
of milk to build up the calcium and heal the foot. Anyway,
we're getting slightly off topic.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
One of the milk brands that you see a lot
in gyms is something called fair Life.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, I've seen it, and I actually literally like had
never thought about what it is or but yes, I
had seen this brand.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Okay, so I don't know that much about it, but
I first got kind of interested in the company reading
Austin Ferrick's book Barrens. There's a whole chapter in there
about dairy barns and it's about fair Oaks, which turned
into fair Life. All I know about fair Life is
that Coke bought them. They had a big distribution deal
(02:23):
with Coke, and we know how important distribution is in
the beverage industry from our previous conversations on Celsius and
things like that. And it's turned into this phenomenon where
fair Life is this milk that's I guess supposed to
be healthier. It has more protein, it has less lactose
or no lactose I can't remember, which means you can
(02:43):
keep it in your fridge for like one hundred days,
which is actually I find that useful. So we should
talk about it because it's also kind of kicked off
this whole protein crazy.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
Protein only got protein everywhere I know, I don't get it. Like, yes,
Starbucks they have these you can get this protein drinks.
I haven't tried them yet. I you know, when did
it become a crime to just eat normally? I get
I ate some eat and I ate some veggies and
occasionally eat some carbs and stuff like that and whatever.
But yeah, over time, it's like different macro nutrients trend, right,
(03:17):
So there was a while it's like good fats, right,
people are really into fats for a while, and then
it's like, oh, you need fermented stuff, so you know,
they's more for your gut health. But we're in like
a we're certainly in a protein bowl market right now.
People really want more protein because reasons.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Yeah, And what's interesting again about fair Life is it's
making a lot of money that's feeding into Coke bottom line.
Share price has gone up quite a bit, and it's
also at odds with basically everything else that's happening in
the dairy industry, where you know, prices tend to be
pretty low and have been kind of stuck in a
downward spiral for a long time. Profit margins are very
(03:56):
very thin, so this is an outlier.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
People are assuming less traditional dairy. I think a lot,
you know, at least I don't know how big is
it it is, but some of the quote alternative milks,
the almond milks of the world, the cashew milk, so
he milk's probably taking some yeah, plain old regular dairy.
No I ever talked on, by the way, number two milk.
I feel like everyone's either skim or fat. These days
(04:20):
because more of the sort of like polarization of society
that no one likes nice middle ground milk anymore. So
now apparently they want super high protein milk too.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
All right, So we have the perfect guest, yes to
discuss fair Life and the dairy industry in general. We're
going to be speaking with Corey Geiger. He is the
lead dairy economist with Cobank, which is a very big
lender to the industry, so really the perfect person to
speak to.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Corey.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
All thoughts, Well, I'm glad to be here Tracy and Joel.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
So I'm going to start with the basic question what
differentiates fair life from traditional milk.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
I think there's two big parts to this, protein and portability.
The portability is it's ultra pasteurized and uses aseptic packaging,
so that means it you can actually ship it without refrigeration.
And when you think about the dairy industry, the dairy
industry is the largest refrigerated food chain in the world. Really,
(05:18):
you think, as soon as we milk a cow and
we cool the milk, it's cooled in the truck to
the processing plant, and then traditional dairy products are refrigerated
all the way to the grocery store at a convenience store.
But the fair Life story and products like it now
are when you go to that aseptic packaging and altar
filtration until you open that bottle, it's got a lot
(05:40):
longer shelf life. Of course, once it's opened, you're at
the fourteen day clock starts ticking.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
This technology that allows you to store milk for a
long time without refrigeration. Is this something that's been understood
for a long time and now there's suddenly a demand
for this milk or is the technology relatively recent? And
then the industry is like, oh, we can because of
this technology, we can market and get people excited about
(06:09):
a new product that can take advantage of these capabilities.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Well, fair Life first came on the scene in twenty fourteen,
so it's been with us about a decade. But one
of the things that the team at fair Life had
to really perfect was this high temperature, short time pasturization,
so you're heating the milk up quick and then cooling
it quick. One of the things I like sharing is
that milk is nature's most perfect beverage. You talked about
(06:32):
it being a health beverage. If it's nature's most perfect beverage,
that also means it's a great place to grow bacteria.
So pasteurization. You know, over one hundred years ago, the
Pasteurized Milk Ordinance came about, and that set a national
standard so that a Wisconsin farmer could sell milk in
the Chicago market, or an upstate New York farmer could
(06:53):
sell milk into the New York City under the same
rules and standards. But going to this ultra the HTST
the high temperature short time pasteurization, Originally you kind of
got a burnt milk taste. So if you're a consumer
and you're tasting it, you're like, eh, it didn't hit
the mark. But now they perfected that process and you
(07:16):
really get the flavor that you've come to expect from
a dairy milk.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You mentioned having to sell into markets, and I'm not
quite sure why, but I was reading a book about
small scale farming from the nineteen fifties last night and
it was talking about if you're a small scale farmer
and you want to get into dairy, you have some options.
One option is you sell into a local market that's
very close to you, because you know you can't refrigerate
(07:41):
the milk for that long, or you sell to like
a cheese factory or something like that, and you can
go a little bit further, sell maybe more in bulk
that sort of thing. How big a deal was fair
Life's distribution deal with Coke in its success, This idea
that now you have a bed that can be shipped
(08:01):
over very very long distances, long timelines, and you have
Coke distributing it.
Speaker 4 (08:08):
I think it was huge when you really look at it.
If you look at the founders of the concept of
what became fair Life. Originally they were experimenting Mike and
Sue McCloskey with a product that they eventually called athletes
Milk Honey, and so they were looking at finding a
health beverage for consumers in that market. So there's one
(08:30):
thing to be innovative. Then it's distribution. And one of
the for me, I grew up on a sixth generation
Wisconsin dairy farmer, one of the obstacles always for milk
has been portability. You know, it's you have to have
this elaborate transportation system to move it. And I'm talking
beverage milk here, and that really overcame the situation with
(08:55):
what Fair Life has done with aseptic packaging and the
HSUT process to hype pastorization. It was game changing.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
I think this is old news, but it used to
be the case that milk prices what's the deal they
were like set based on your distance from Oak Claire,
Wisconsin or something like that, because there was this premise like, oh,
we want milk very far away, and you sell to
your local market. And explained it that went away or something.
But why was Oa Claire, Wisconsin this sort of central
(09:25):
hub for a while of the index for pricing milk.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Explain that, yes, there's a number of reasons for it. Actually,
we'll start with a little dairy history. Up until about ten,
New York was the largest milk producing state in the
United States. Then that became Wisconsin, and obviously now America's
dairy Land is on the license plates Wisconsin. Actually, in
(09:51):
the eighteen late eighteen hundreds, a gentleman who became governor
of the state, William Dempster Hoartz, secured the first refrigerated
real car to ship Wisconsin to New York City in
the eighteen seventies, and today Wisconsin exports about ninety percent
of their milk production via cheese, and that export could
be the other forty nine states and certainly now around
(10:12):
the world. But because of all the cheese made in
Wisconsin and Minnesota, Well Claire was that kind of center
point between Wisconsin and Minnesota to establish a base price
for milk. That went away here in about two thousand
and we have a different system, but milk is still
highly regulated under Federal Milk Marketing Orders, which is really
(10:35):
what establishes milk prices.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Could you just real quickly explain one of these words.
What does that mean? Like it's regular because the prices
do fluctuate, So what does that mean that it's still
highly regulated?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
Yeah, highly regulated means that Federal Milk Marketing Orders. There's
four classes of milk. Class one would be beverage milk.
That would be the traditional milk that you drink. And
when you come back to the Fair Life story and
you discussed that milk fluid milk sales have been flat,
but products like Fair Life and Core Power in those
(11:07):
are actually a mixture of fluid milk. In Class two,
products which traditionally have been scupable products like yogurt, ice
cream would be in there. Sour cream would be in there,
and then Class three I liked sharing little miss Tuffett
sat on her muffet eating her curds in waste of
Class three is cheese, curds and whey, and then Class
(11:29):
four products are butter and powder, and butt powder would
be non fat dry milk. But each of these classes
has different pricing mechanisms, and today beverage milk is priced
on the higher of Class three or class four. It
gets complicated, and that's why I call their very regulated.
(11:51):
But these orders came about in nineteen thirty seven. It
was an act of Congress and it was to ensure
the orderly marketing milk and ensure fluid milk in markets
that don't have a lot of dairy coves.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
So one thing I learned from reading my old farming
book is that there are a lot of levers that
you can pull if you're again this is for small
scale farming, but there are levers you can pull to
boost profits. So maybe you're not going to make that
much from milk itself, but you know, you can sell
the calves for veal, or once the dairy production starts
(12:27):
going down with your cows, you can sell those, or
you can sell manure for fertilizer and things like that,
all these different levers. Can you talk a little bit
more about the actual business model of a dairy farm
and where money comes from nowadays, because I imagine it's
changed quite a bit.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
This is a dynamic space and from over. We'll talk
about the dairy farm in a second. But dairy right
now has eleven billion dollars of new plant investment in
the United States, and it's a number of categories, so
there's a lot of energy taking place in a lot
of investment. This is historic investment. When you get to
the dairy farm. Obviously, if you're a milking cows, your
(13:07):
number one revenue source is milk. I would say up
until five years ago, ninety percent of your income came
from milk, unless you were selling a lot of crops.
But one of the dynamic things that have changed, and
it's in the news a lot right now, is beef prices,
and every cow has a second career as a beef animal.
(13:28):
About five years ago, well I considered the dairy cow
the most researched animal on planet Earth. We know more
about her. We have over one hundred and twenty three
million records on her over the last one hundred years.
In two thousand and eight, the science of genomics came
into the industry. I was actually the first one to
write a public article about it. But what you do
(13:50):
is you take a DNA sample from the cow, you
run her profile, and you can compare it to all
this phenotypic data that one hundred and twenty three million
records about seventy percent accuracy, we can predict what that
baby calf will do as a cow, and that has
changed a lot of things in dairy. We are improving
(14:12):
butterfat and protein levels at paces we've never seen before.
And these days one out of four heifer calves, baby
calves that will eventually become cows, have a genomic test
run on them, and that has really changed things. Then
as that took place, gender sorted seamen came into the industry,
(14:33):
so we can they use lasers. They can sort out
the y chromosomes which make a bull calf, and with
about ninety to ninety five percent accuracy, produce a product
that makes dairy heffercalves. So dairy farmers are planning their replacements.
They're using science to predict the ones and that opened
a whole new door to use what we call beef breeds,
(14:57):
think angus, limousine, charlat that we breed those, we'd use
artificial insemination. The original AI and agriculture had artificial intelligence
to inseminate the cows, and dairy farmers are making more
money on that these days. So about five years ago,
back to Tracy's original question, a dairy farmer was making
(15:20):
about one dollar per hundred weight per hundred pounds of
milk equivalent from beef sales, and say a dairy farmer's
making eighteen to twenty, So it wasn't eighteen to twenty
dollars per hundred weight for milk. It wasn't a big deal.
But today that number has gone to four four fifty.
So we're generating a baby black heighted calf. An angus
calf that's destined for a feed lot eventually is selling
(15:42):
between twelve and eighteen hundred dollars right now, and so
it's a big revenue stream doesn't no matter what size
your farmers, everybody can play.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
So when you're talking about improving sort of butterfat and
so forth, what is going is it selective breeding? That
just means that you're more likely to get a baby
cow that has high levels of whatever you're looking for, like, what.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Is better production rate?
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Yeah, what is the source of I guess higher yields.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
So I'm past president of Holstein Association USA, which is
the largest dairy breed organization in the world, and that
source is a bundle of metrics. We study a lot
of traits. Certainly the big two would be butterfat, well
big three would be butter fat, protein, and milk, but
we are also looking at mass titus, resistance or that
you know, the ability to combat and infection. In the
(16:48):
other we're looking for longevity, which as a trait we
call productive life, or even daughter pregnancy rate, which is
a fertility metric. So that's this bundle of better yields
from the cow and reduce costs from the standpoint of
healthcare and those kind of things. And right now, if
you use the best group of Holstein bulls or even
(17:10):
Jersey bulls on the next generation, each year, we're improving
genetics one hundred dollars per year. Prior to genomics that
number was like thirteen dollars. So this is like significant
improvement and using natural science and really doing a better job.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Sorry, I started laughing at the mastitis reference because it's hilarious.
It's hilarious.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
No.
Speaker 2 (17:35):
One of the old timey solutions for this in that
old book was using a bicycle pump to inflate the
cows utters. Huh, So I'm guessing people don't do that
so much anymore.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
That is true, we do not do that any Okay.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
What about you know you're talking about income that dairy
farms can generate. What's going on with the actual input
prices because it takes a lot, again from reading this book,
takes a lot of feed, a lot of hay, a
lot of grains to actually get these cows producing milk
and also up to size if you're going to sell
(18:12):
them for beef.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
So the biggest costs on a dairy farm are feed
and labor. My wife's family was actually the first to
put robots in twenty five years ago in the United
States start milking their cow. So some farmers are using
robot technology, but that's not exactly mainstream at this point.
But look at the near term prices for feed soybean
(18:34):
and corn grain, certainly in LFELFA are some of the
core constituents. Those prices are down now that's a good
thing if you're a livestock producer, not a great thing
if you're a row crop farmer. The other thing, these days,
thirty seven percent of the US corn crop actually goes
to biofuels ethanol, so there's byproduct feeds there as well
(18:57):
as in the soybean space. We're making biodiesel and one
of the by products of that is soybean meals. So
the cow is a great recycler. In fact, that four
stomachs of the cow allow her to eat a lot
of by product feeds. And I've traveled I think I've
been to forty eight states covering the dairy industry.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
You know.
Speaker 4 (19:16):
I've seen tomatoes and carrots that didn't make human grade
food in California get fed to cows. I've been in
Ohio where reject jelly from smuckers has been fed to cows.
I've been to Canada where a farmer plows out driveway
next door of the plant that makes biscuits for McDonald's
and the reject biscuits go into what is a total
(19:37):
mixed ration a TMR, So it's a big food blender
mixes up all the food and the cows get a
blended diet. So it's kind of a remarkable story.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Honestly, a cow fed on McDonald's biscuit sounds pretty good.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
So great. It sounds like a cow is just an
amazing machine. All of these discarded food products go in
that people that there are no other use because most
of us don't have four stomachs. And then every year
the cows get better at production, or you get better
at producing higher producing cows. Sounds like a great business.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
It is remarkable. And that's why. Even though milk is
a product that is very consistent, every farm is different
and however they approach it. You know, there's very there's
similarities to it, but there's a lot of regional differences
as well.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Wait, okay, so cows might be amazing machines. Amazing machines.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, good machines.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Thank you. I had to get at least one pun
in there. But the dairy industry, we hear, has been challenged, right,
So consumption has been going down. I think I read
somewhere it's down forty percent in the US since nineteen
seventy five something like that. Profit margins are still pretty compressed.
Prices seem to be on basically it's a race to
(20:53):
the bottom, and so you've kind of seen a lot
of consolidation of the smaller farms into these big dairy conglomerates.
Is that this story there?
Speaker 4 (21:01):
Well, I want to back up first though. Dairy consumption
is actually at the highest level it's been in forty years,
and we measure that. We have some really good USDA
data on that. But if you look at your term,
you know, we started out talking about fair Life, that's
Coca Cola's newest one billion dollar brand. If you look
at yogurt year over a year, it's up almost ten percent.
(21:24):
One of the big stories in the yogurt category is
certainly Shabani and I would have half of the sales
of yogurt these days are Greek yogurt, which are high
protein yogurt. Another category that's been exploding. It's we made
Grandma's cottage cheese hip again, and cottage cheese is up.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
The cottage cheese is great. I always thought it always
feels like it should have a moment more like Greek yogurt,
and it's like, oh, this is cottage cheese is year?
Is it finally happening?
Speaker 4 (21:52):
It is? And people can't make it fast enough. I
was actually talking to a dairy processor at Wisconsin Cheesemakers
just last week when it comes to yogurt, and one
of his customers said, can you get me more? And
he goes, well, not until next year, and he goes, well,
just send me whatever you can. It's those products are
(22:12):
very tight right now. And then cheese consumption is at
an all time high, actually at forty pounds per person
per year per capita. So those are some big growth areas.
What you're probably seeing Tracy, though, is the story on
fluid milk. In the nineteen seventies, the average American drank
thirty gallons a year, and now we're probably closer to
(22:33):
nineteen gallons. One of the things for fluid milk is
it's hitch to dry breakfast cereal compliments to one another,
and in fact, one third of all fluid milk it's
consumed on dry breakfast cereal, and that category has not
been going well. But then you flip over to these
the core power, which is really a high protein milkshake,
(22:56):
and that is not actually tracked in the fluid beverage
cat it's considered a different product. We have seen consolidation
in the dairy industry. There's fewer dairy farms each year.
But the interesting thing is I graduated college in nineteen
ninety five. While dairy farm numbers are down, the number
of dairy cows are the same, essentially about nine nine
(23:19):
point three million, but milk production from those cows is
up forty five percent during that time. It just speaks
to the efficiency of the dairy cow and what things
are taking place on a dairy farm.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
My intuition is correct that within the liquid milks category,
we've sort of everything in society has become so polarized,
and everyone loves extremes, and we see it in politics,
we see it everywhere. This is well known people. No
one likes the middle ground anymore. Within the liquid milk category,
has everyone sort of has gone to the extreme ends.
(23:55):
They want the high fat milk or the skim leaving
that good old two percent milk the missing middle.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
That's a very interesting question, Joe. What's taking place in
fluid milk? I three big trends protein so products like
fair Life. Another one is lactose free. A new milk
plant going up today will have membrane technology and to
do reverse osmosis. And about everybody on the new milks
are pulling out lactose. And you've got to remember about
(24:22):
one third of Americans are probably lactose and tolerant, about
one hundred and twenty million. So let's make a product
that they can enjoy. And then in the traditional milk categories,
you're absolutely right, whole milk is about the only one
that's growing right now, skim, which is basically fat free,
and the other percentages are down. You know, the dietary
(24:43):
guidelines for Americans that USDA and FDA do every five
years haven't really changed their guidance on fat. But there's
a lot of research out there that said the fats
saturated fats found in dairy and animal protein like beef
and pork and poultry, fish too, seafood, are actually good
(25:03):
for you. And so so there are people already voting
with their pocketbooks this category.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
One thing we learned from previous episodes on I Guess
Trendy Drinks of the Moment is the importance of shelf
placement in grocery stores. And I have to admit, when
I'm buying milk at a grocery store, I basically just
buy what's at eye level. I do buy whole milk though, Yeah,
that's the preference. But how important is placement for a
(25:29):
product like milk, which generally would be considered a staple
and perhaps doesn't have as much brand loyalty as some
other things.
Speaker 4 (25:38):
Yeah, well, there's a reason in the grocery aisle. If
you look at if you walk through your grocery island
next time after listening to this podcast, dairy is often
in the back of the store because dairy is in
like over ninety five percent of households, so it's a
routinely purchased product, and that's part of the placement situation. Now.
(25:59):
About five years years ago, a lot of the plant
based beverages were making inroads, and those sales are actually
down now. People consumers, in my intuition, are looking for
clean labels and they want to see ingredients that they
can understand, and I think that's been part of the
changing tide in a dairy space as well. And it's
interesting when you look at it and you think about
(26:22):
we're just past a ten year anniversary now of Coca
Cola and Select Milk and Fair Life Partnership. Now there's
others that are looking into that space, you know, PepsiCo
has announced that they're going to have their Propel water
brand is going to have a clear protein in it
that has twenty grams of protein. And they're also reformulating
their muscle milk and they're going to have dairy based
(26:44):
protein in that category as well. I think when you
go to places like Costco or Walmart, dairy is just
not found in the dairy aisle anymore. It's shelf stable.
It could be in the health food section, it could
be in you know, all nutrition sections and those kind
of things. And so it's expanding beyond its traditional role
(27:06):
because of these high protein beverages. And also if you're
looking for calcium, some of these products are you know,
and one serving can get you fifty percent of that
as well.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
The way these trends change when it comes to macro nutrients,
you know, someone I saw a tweet or something and
there's like a fiber is going to be the new protein.
That's going to be the big thing everyone wants.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
We should encourage fiber. We should probably we're useful than
I mean, Americans consume a lot of protein already. I
don't know why we need more.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Apparently we need more, But does the industry, Like how
long does it take the industry to say, you know what,
this is a durable trend We're actually going to invest
in the processing space for this, because there's got to
be some risk. Consumers are very fickle Internet health influencers.
They may be onto something else by next year, like no,
(28:10):
you got to get whatever, you go back to low fat,
that's the new hot thing, etc. How do producers think
about their capital allocation budget when it comes to playing
on new trends within consumption.
Speaker 4 (28:25):
Well that's a large and big question. Yeah, and you
really look at the long term trends and where things
are going. Tracy's absolutely right. If you read some of
the research. Fiber probably will be the next follow up
the protein. I hear people talking about how do I
put a protein drink out there with fiber in it
and bundle the two together. You know, when I was
(28:47):
going to grade school, there was a cheese out there
called Mazzarella in the late mid nineteen seventies that was
only at a couple pounds per capita consumption, and now
it's the most consumed cheese, largely because of its relationship
with pizza. So these mega trends can reshape categories. You
know in the nineteen well, let's back up even a
(29:09):
little further. There was in the nineteen sixties there was
an organization called the Wisconsin Feeder Pig Cooperative. And how
in the heck would that be formed in Wisconsin when
I was the largest hog state. But what was happening?
We didn't have the technology going back to kurds and
Way making cheese and why we could make cheese, but
the byproduct was way, and in Way was protein, the
(29:32):
most complete amino acid known humanity. But cheesemakers were just
set in a farmer's home with it do something. Some
would spread it on fields, some would feed it the
baby pigs. Well, we learned the baby pigs would grow
so fast, so that Wisconsin Feeder Pig co Op started
shipping two to three million feeder pigs that I want
to be finished with porn and soybeans. Well, now we
(29:52):
can use these big dryers just using drying and harvest
that way in a lot cheese plants, not a lot.
All the new cheese plants are really going in with
a business model not only to make cheese, but to
capture the way weigh. Protein isolates are selling roughly at
ten dollars a pound, which is record high. And so
(30:13):
these business models that are taking place and the research
to build these eleven billion dollars A new plant investment
is really how do we make more out of milk?
I think you know collagens and colostrum, and now a
new one is lacto fare in, which is one of
the milk components that really helps reduce inflammation. There's some
(30:34):
research out there, you know, depending on the number you see,
there may be five thousand there, maybe six three hundred
somewhere in their unique molecules and milk. And we are
just beginning to research that, learning what parts we can
pull apart and help humans. And there's going to be
more and more in that space here in the coming years.
(30:54):
And that's all part of that investment strategy. What's going
to take place in the plant years away from some
of that.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
But so, one thing I know about farmers is they're
always complaining about something and no judgment there. I'm always
complaining about something too. Joe can attest to this, But
what are the current complaints that you're hearing the most
from dairy farms.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Well, right now, near term, ninety percent of milk in
the United States is priced on multiple component pricing. Dairy
farmers would see an mcpiece, so the ninety percent of
that pricing is butterfat and protein. Well, if you look
at protein and butterfat is two nascars on the racetrack.
From two thousand to two thousand and fourteen, the protein
(31:37):
nascar always won, and then as consumers started demanding more fat,
and remember the flavor is in the fat, butterfat won
eight of the last ten years. But right now we've
made so much butterfat that butter prices are down, not
only in the US but worldwide. So that's changed the
milk checks. So that would be if you went to
a dairy meeting right now to be like, that's what's
(32:00):
milk prices down here in the last sixty days. That's
one issue that is near on top of mind. The
other thing would be labor. Of course, it takes a
lot of people to run a dairy farm, and the
US dairy industry and a lot of farmers Americans don't
like doing dirty jobs when it comes down to it.
(32:22):
On weekends, I work on our family farm. But these
are still just like building homes. This is very hands
on process here and that would be another issue that
would be top of mind dairy farmers, and you'll always
get a good conversation on the weather. Farmers in general.
Are we always beholding to Mother Nature?
Speaker 3 (32:42):
It's interesting you didn't say trade, but partly like I
get the impression that there's always a million little lawsuits
going on between Wisconsin farmers and their friends on the
other side of the border about some rules of origin
and they're not buying enough this. It seems like this
is one of those things that transcends every administration. They
(33:04):
try to hammer it out, but they're always like sort
of arguing over details. You're not fulfilling that as you're
supposed to let in this mini galllenge. You didn't what
are the core persistent issues that American dairy farmers feel
is unfair or unideal about I guess our dairy trading
relationship with Canada.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Joe. That's a great point, and I should have put
it in my list. Trade is top of mind. In
nineteen ninety five, the US was essentially a non player
in the global dairy exports, and that's the year that
NAFTA came about. Actually, NAFTA came about nineteen ninety four,
and then nineteen ninety five the US Dairy Export Council
(33:44):
was formed. And these days about seventeen percent of the
US milk supply, or one out of seven tankers of milk,
are actually exported as either dairy products or ingredients around
the world, so it's very important to dairy. We're actually
having a strong export year, but largely because US dairy
products and ingredients were lower than the other two major competitors.
(34:08):
So the EU the twenty seven countries of the European Union,
are the world's largest dairy exporters. They roughly export twenty
percent of their milk production. Then the small and mighty
nation of New Zealand is the number two export They
have five million cows and five million people, roughly in
the size of Minnesota and Wisconsin, so one third of
(34:29):
their gross domestic product comes from dairy. If you read
Auckland paper, you would hear dairy at least weekly. And
then comes to US. The US is number one export
customer is our friends south of the border in Mexico.
So the US is about a nine billion dollar export
market on dairy. Mexico is at about two billion of that.
(34:52):
Now Canada is a discussion to itself. Canada's milk supply
is largely governed by quota system, so dairy farmers up
there purchased the right to sell milk, and in fact,
on a Canadian dairy farm, the quota is worth more
than everything else. It's worth more than the cow's it's
worth more than the land, it's worth more in the
(35:14):
equipment to make that work. You can have a lot
of imports come in, so there are some things that
we send north to the border, butter being one of them.
But when you hear the headlines right now, of course
there are other things that were agreed upon in the
trade agreement the last time, the US Mexico Canada trade agreement.
In one of those largely centers on protein.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
Surprisingly, that's interesting. So if you look into your crystal
ball for the future in the next ten years, look
at the dairy industry, what's going to be most important
in terms of the success of a dairy farm or profitability?
Is it technology? Is it scale and consolidation, is it
(35:55):
perhaps branding and specialization or efficiencies in a way you're
breaking down milk into all these various products, or all
of the above.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
I think that's a two part question. Because you got
the dairy farmers or dairy producers, and then you have
the dairy processors. We're going to have to use more
and more technology on the dairy farms. I think, coming
back to the cow, when dairy farmers invest in genetics,
those genetics are additive and they're so important and if
this protein booms continues, genetics is one of the only
(36:28):
ways to improve it. We don't have a lot of
feeding practices in the toolbox in that regard, certainly AI
and technology and I'm going to say artificial intelligence here
for the farmers out there, listening will be very crucial
into this, and we're going to have to use more
technology and find ways to use robotic technology. We're already
doing some of that and rotary milking parlors. So a
(36:50):
rotary parlor would be like a merry go round that
the cows go on. But when we do milking preparation
right now, some robots are putting on teat dip or
a sanitizer before we milk that cow, which is important.
So those are some areas the space, and a lot
of dairy farmers are also crop farmers, especially growing corn
silage where alfalfa would be two big staples, and you know,
(37:14):
the whole space on farm equipment would be another area.
When it comes to the processing plants. You know, some
of these new and modern processing plants have a lot
of stainless steel and those costs are going up. But
it's that investment in technology, investment in it. You know,
all this ultra filtered milk that we've been talking about too.
(37:34):
You know, I was just in a plant. There's almost
nine thousand filters in there. It's very it's a very
clean and good process, but it takes a lot of investment.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
It's materials heavy, materials heavy environment.
Speaker 4 (37:48):
Yes, it is.
Speaker 2 (37:49):
All right, Corey. Thank you so much for coming on
all thoughts that we're going to have to leave it there.
But that was so much fun. Love talking about milk clicking.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
Yeah, that was fantastic. I learned a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Thank you, Joe and Tracy.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
I will say after that conversation, I'm not I'm not
craving liquid milk, but I'm craving I'm craving cheese.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
Yeah, I'm craving cheese right now. And butter like a
nice piece I want a piece of bread, would just
like go crazy with the butter, butter and salt. Yeah,
butter and salt.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
I love that it's lunchtime.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
Yeah, I know, we have a yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
I really did learn a lot conversation.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
No, that was really helpful. This is one of those markets,
like many egg markets, I think, where there's clearly a
heavy market component and clearly a heavy regulatory component as well,
and so I think those are some of the hardest
for me to wrap my head around. I didn't realize,
for example, that in Canada that you buy the right
to sell dairy, and so that just that right to
(38:56):
sell into the market becomes a very valuable asset in
its own right. I thought that was a great conversation.
I'm also fascinated by the fact that maybe it's just
day one in terms of learning about all of the
useful molecules in that can be separated out and have
some He mentioned a few that I had never heard of.
But the idea that there's just more science there to
(39:17):
be done on learning what is milk or what is
in it that could be a value A lot of
interesting stuff there.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
No the efficiencies and the values you can ring out
of a single product. The cow kind of amazing.
Speaker 3 (39:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
So yeah, again, I'm going to go back to that
book just because it's fresh in my mind. But one
of the things that was saying is if you feed
the cow is a bunch of corn, then they spit
out corn kernels in their manure. Oh and you can
apparently actually feed pigs on the half eaten corn kernels.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's truly discussion in the manure.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
I know. But it's efficient, Joe.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's interesting. I think, what do you call it? Mixed something,
something that you could just like, oh, we're going to
have some old biscuits and we're going to put some
tomatoes together, and it doesn't matter. The cow's stomach is
going to be able to digest it like that is
a really incredible machine, and it is a good reminder
of how extraordinary nature and biology are from efficiency standpoint.
That if you wanted to build a machine that could
(40:15):
separate do the equivalent of four different stomachs, et cetera,
it would be such an extraordinarily costly machine. And nature
has solved this for us via hundreds of millions of
years of evolution. It's just a very fascinating thing to
think about some of these how efficient these processes have
gotten and then what scientists can do when they learn
(40:36):
more about how they work.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
The cows are efficient themselves. I'm still amazed at some
of the labor inputs that go into this. So, you know,
cows producing milk have to produce calves, so you have
to inseminate them. You have to take the calves away
from the cows so that the cows will produce milk
that you can sell. And then you have to teach
the cows to like drink from either a bucket or
(40:59):
an artificial utter or whatever. There's a lot you have
to do.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I'm not sure. I may have mentioned it once or twice.
When I was growing up in the Midwest, my grandmother,
her husband was a dairy and fruit farmer in the
middle of Michigan, and he was very big in the
local sort of dairy board or whatever it was, et cetera.
And when I was younger, I thought that was so boring,
And now I'm like, it's so many I wish you
(41:24):
were still around. Yeah, I wish I have so many.
Quite like, if I hear around these days, it'd be
one of those things where I would like visit him
and I would like ask him two hours of questions
about the dairy. You have him on odd Lots like
one of those people who will answer any of my questions.
She would have. He was a very patient, good guy.
And I always feel like, man, I wish a little
bit older whatever, because that would have been a very
(41:44):
good resource.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Yeah. I feel the same way. My granddad was a
cattle rancher in Texas, and he died before I got
a chance to ask him all these questions. All I
remember from his cow industry is that he used to
name some of the cows after me and my cousin,
yeah them, and he'd tell us like, Tracy number three
is no longer with us, So there we go.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
That's fun, all right.
Speaker 2 (42:05):
Shall we leave it there?
Speaker 3 (42:06):
Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
This has been another episode of the odd Bots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy.
Speaker 3 (42:12):
Alloway and I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at
the Stalwart. Follow our producers Carbon Rodriguez at Carmen armand
dash O Bennett at Dashbot and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks.
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