Duvall Visits World Dairy Expo

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall made his first trip to the World Dairy Expo in Madison, WI last week.  As a former dairy producer, he said he was impressed with what he saw.

“Oh, it's beautiful here. The cattle are beautiful, and the people are having a good time. It’s a little windy, but other than that, it's a great time. And I'm a recovering dairyman myself from Georgia, and I have always wanted to come here and never had the opportunity to do that. So this is an exciting day for me," Duvall noted.  "I milked Holsteins all my life because that's what I grew up with, but I always had a desire to milk jerseys. And my wife right now - we both lost our first lows to cancer, and we have just been married three years ago - she's got me back in it. We got two Jersey cows at home that she's milking, so I'm her relief milker when I get home.”

One of the biggest issues in the dairy industry is updating the Federal Milk Marketing Orders.

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“We've got a lot of wins in this, but we also were disappointed in a few areas," Duvall said.  "You know, really and truly, we're proud of the process. It got this process started several years ago when we called all the dairy industry together in the Midwest, from dairymen to co-ops to all the people that were involved in it, and said, you know, we need to do something. And then, coming out of that, we had the federal milk order hearings, and that lasted weeks and weeks on weeks, and now we're going through the rules and rules that are being released from it. So, we've had some wins in it. We were glad to see what happened, but there are some areas we wish we could have gone a little bit further.” 

Are there ways the proposals can be improved?  Duvall said yes.

“We'd like to see a definite audit before we have the price changes that they put into effect by the milk plans, and that was one area we were disappointed that we didn't have an audit before those changes were made,” Duvall added.

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