The emergence of the dairy checkoff did not happen overnight. Farmers, processors and, more recently, importers have long worked together to secure a strong, vibrant future for dairy. Journey through the rich history of the dairy checkoff and learn about important developments that have unified industry efforts to build trust in and demand for U.S. dairy products.
1914
In October 1914, the country’s worst outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth Disease (FMD) struck Chicago’s stockyards and quickly spread across 22 states.
More than 172,000 cattle, sheep and pigs were culled, many of them dairy cows. Milk production dropped sharply, causing shortages in cities including Chicago and New York.
Quarantine zones halted or restricted the rail transport of dairy products, and trains carrying cattle were often detained or rerouted. In one instance, the Washington State Department of Agriculture received a telegram reporting that two railcars of dairy cattle en route to Roy, Wash., had been exposed to FMD at a Minnesota transfer station.
Upon arrival in Spokane, the 102 cows were quarantined in specially built pens. After a positive FMD diagnosis, all the cattle were destroyed, and the holding pens and other materials were burned.
The crisis only deepened with consumer confidence in dairy products plummeting amid growing concerns about food safety.
Farmers and processors knew they had to act quickly, and the origin of dairy promotion is rooted in this crisis.
1915
In 1915, National Dairy Council (NDC) was founded. Its mission? Restore consumer trust and promote milk’s nutritional benefits. Dr. E.V. McCollum – often called the “father of vitamins” – advised NDC, and his research identified vitamin A in milk and its essential role in vision and childhood development. He also discovered that vitamin D prevents rickets by enabling calcium absorption, sparking a push to get more of it into children’s diets. Since few foods naturally contain vitamin D, fortifying milk was a clear solution.
1918
In 1918, an NDC committee created a long-range nutrition education program to be implemented in schools, marking its first effort in a long-running commitment to children’s health. A year later, NDC created educational material: “Milk – The Necessary Food for Growth and Health.” And in 1937, NDC and others in the industry launched the first “June Dairy Month” promotion. (More NDC history and accomplishments can be found here.)
NDC’s early credibility in dairy health and nutrition laid the foundation for everything that followed.
patchwork of promotion
By the mid-20th century, the dairy promotion landscape was booming – but highly fragmented. For example, at one point New York had 11 dairy promotion organizations and Ohio had eight. Most were funded voluntarily by farmers and processors and operated with full autonomy.
This decentralization, however, could work in an era when dairy farms dotted the national landscape. Consider that there were more than 1 million dairies in 1944.
The American Dairy Association (ADA) was created in 1940 by farmers and cooperatives who saw the need for a coordinated, national approach to promoting milk. Facing a milk surplus, they recognized that nutrition education alone wasn’t enough.
Headquartered in Chicago, ADA became a driving force in dairy promotion during the “Golden Age of Advertising,” from the 1950s through the early 1970s. ADA supported national advertising campaigns and in-store retail programs that helped put milk and other dairy products front and center for consumers.
ADA also was key in bringing together the growing number of local and regional promotion organizations, helping to create a more unified voice for the industry.
And in 1969, Dairy Research Inc. (DRINC) emerged to drive product innovation, including, yes, carbonated flavored milk. This concept never made it out of the lab but A for effort!!
As if the waters weren’t muddied enough, some state legislatures passed mandatory checkoff programs, and they ended up taking funding from the other organizations.
“So in our case, we had the Minnesota Dairy Industry Committee, which was a checkoff organization,” said Mike Kruger, who joined the American Dairy Association of Minnesota in 1981 and later served as CEO of Midwest Dairy (1985-2016) that was created from various mergers. “At the time, most state checkoff programs had a refund clause, so farmers could get their money back if they wanted. The funding was very inconsistent, and you had multiple layers of organizations all over the place.”
A pivotal merger: udia
NDC served as the main national connection to local promotion teams by sharing nutrition education programs and other resources. One memorable tool was a cartoon titled “Husky and Skinny.” This animated piece featured Husky, who drank milk, and Skinny, who didn’t. (Spoiler alert: Husky was the stronger swimmer!)
But beyond NDC, there was an overall lack of nationwide strategy and unity, which created redundancies, fiscal inefficiencies and no collaboration among teams of promotion professionals. For the most part, every organization ran its own show: dairy princesses, community events and booths at the county fair.
“Every council and every promotion office was its own entity,” says Tab Forgac, a health professional who began her career with NDC in 1977. “While this served local efforts well, the impact of a nationwide program with shared outcomes was missing.”
So with NDC, ADA and DRINC competing with state checkoffs and processors for funding, farmers began asking a fair question: are we getting the most from our investment?
They pushed for a unified approach and got their wish in 1970 when NDC, ADA and DRINC merged to create the United Dairy Industry Association (UDIA).
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The effort wasn’t easy and it wasn’t unanimous, but the vision and commitment made by early promotion advocates aren’t lost on Texas farmer Neil Hoff, who served as chair of UDIA from 2014-23.
“I’ve heard the stories of what those early guys went through to put UDIA together and, man, they were heroes who could see the future,” Hoff said. “That was before my time, but I heard there were some battles. The current and future generations need to know what those farmers went through to put together what we’ve got today."
Sense of unity
For the first time, dairy promotion organizations around the U.S. had a coordinated platform – a true federation – that amplified dairy’s voice and stretched every farmer dollar. There also was a sharing of expertise and resources across promotion teams.
“It was decided we’d have better synergies if we created a managing organization called UDIA,” Kruger said. “So you have a national umbrella organization and then there was lots of consolidation occurring between local dairy councils and local promotion organizations.”
Each member organization had a memorandum of understanding with UDIA that spelled out the details of the relationship. The organizations would send their CEOs (then called member organization managers or “MOMs”) to UDIA meetings to guide programming efforts. UDIA board members had voting power that was proportional to financial contribution, so larger organizations had more influence.
For example, the Southeast United Dairy Industry Association (SUDIA) – now The Dairy Alliance – wielded a lot of influence given its farmer membership spanned several states.
The member managers also built a “user pay” model, meaning they’d gather and discuss strategies, such as those focused on retail, and choose the ones that made the most sense for their region.
“Not every organization, for example, wanted to fund a fluid milk initiative because they might not have been a fluid milk state,” said Scott Higgins, CEO of ADA Mideast, who began his promotion career in 1984 with Mideast UDIA. “So you’d have people say, ‘I want to continue doing my local thing’ and it sometimes left a handful of us to fund a project.
“I remember telling my board, ‘We as a state and regional organization can’t do as much unless we lean in and use the resources of all of us.’”
UDIA operated under the direction of a CEO – John Sliter – and a staff of about 75 employees. It had a farmer-led board of directors, but it wasn’t a top-down organization. The local promotion teams maintained their leadership structure and independence.
“UDIA has always been as grassroots as it gets,” said Bill Siebenborn, a retired Missouri dairy farmer who served as UDIA chair for 10 years before Hoff. “UDIA assured that the farmer back home is who we were working for and that has pretty much held dairy promotion together. You can’t work individually and make it happen.”
made for tv
The UDIA structure proved especially effective when it came to a key strategy of the 1970s and ’80s: advertising.
Over time, the pooled funds supported national TV and radio advertising and public figures such as Willard Scott – the beloved weatherman from NBC’s Today Show – appeared in dairy-focused advertising, such as the “Real Dairy Food with Willard Scott” commercial.
Tom Jenkinson brought an advertising background and savviness to help guide the dairy industry’s strategy in this area. His career included stops with Associated Milk Producers Inc., California Milk Advisory Board and Goddess of the Rockies Milk, Inc.
(Side note: you did not misread that last organization’s name. Goddess of the Rockies Milk, Inc. was a promotion organization covering Colorado, Wyoming and Montana when Jenkinson joined in 1981. One of his first moves was proposing a name change. “I promptly went to the board of directors and said, ‘When I’m in meetings and say I’m with Goddess of the Rockies, they think I’m a religious guru,’” Jenkinson said. “We are in the western region of UDIA, so we henceforth shall be called Western Dairy Farmers Promotion Association. They passed it, and the rest is history.”)
As for Jenkinson’s insights on UDIA advertising, he says: “If you were buying advertising in the 1950s and 1960s, you could probably buy a little advertising in a local market but as you started trying to make those dollars stretch, they wouldn't stretch. So there was importance for the whole nation to put their money together and do national buys.”
Rick Naczi, former CEO of American Dairy Association North East, added: “We had a tremendous economy of scale because of UDIA. A commercial may have cost $200,000 but multiply that 20 or so times around the country. That’s a lot of overhead that farmers didn’t need to pay because of UDIA.”
talking 'real' dairy
One of the more visible advertising efforts incorporated REAL® Seal, a voluntary certification program that identifies authentic products made with U.S.-produced cow’s milk, processed domestically and free from imported milk or imitation ingredients.
Originally developed by the California Milk Advisory Board in 1976 under Jenkinson’s leadership, the REAL® Seal was adopted by UDIA in 1980 and expanded for national use on dairy products and frozen pizza.
“We were under pressure about non-dairy items,” Naczi said. “Even before the National Dairy Board, there were restrictions on saying negative things about margarine or imitation cheese. The number of non-dairy products exploded quickly.”
To promote the Seal, UDIA launched high-profile ad campaigns, including TV commercials featuring horror film legend Vincent Price. In a memorable 1982 print ad, Price is pictured surrounded by dairy products, exclaiming, “Imitations on my creations? Horrors!”
“Farmers loved that we were defending their products,” said Jenkinson. “REAL® Seal was a badge of honor. Some processors saw the value, too, but pizza makers weren’t thrilled. When cheese prices rose, they wanted to use blends with imitation cheese, but the Seal required 100% real cheese.”
UDIA staff understood the importance of sharing highlights such as this campaign and other relevant updates with farmers. To facilitate this, UDIA purchased fax machines for every member organization in 1985 to communicate via the top technology of the day.
Higgins recalls Earl Poling, the Mideast UDIA CEO, being resistant to adding a fax machine to the office.
“I remember Earl saying, ‘I guess we gotta put this thing in here now’ and our secretary asking, ‘how does this hook up?,’” Higgins says with a laugh. “Earl said ‘what is so dang important that we can’t mail it and get it two days later?’”
rats! the Ndc impact
NDC’s role across UDIA continued to expand and included school-based programs, including the infamous rat feeding experiment. NDC’s warehouse shipped live rats to elementary schools across the country, with each class receiving two siblings, a cage and a guidebook titled Milk Makes the Difference.
The goal was to demonstrate milk’s nutritional value. One rat was fed a standard diet plus milk; the other received the same diet but with sugar water replacing milk. Students observed the rats, tracking their growth, fur condition and overall health.
The contrast became clear quickly. Rats on the diet including sugar water grew less, had duller coats and appeared unhealthy. The program eventually ended with pressure from special interest groups but for Michele Cooper – who began her career in 1984 with Dairy Farmers Inc. (later Florida Dairy Farmers) – the memory lingers.
“The rats were in the back of our offices, and I thought it was the creepiest thing in the history of forever,” said Cooper, who retired as CEO of Florida Dairy Farmers in January 2025. “It seems super dated and definitely doesn’t reflect how we think about animal care today, but it was a powerful, if offbeat, way to show the value of dairy.”
Not all NDC strategies flirted with the unconventional.
NDC developed the first (and likely only) nationwide nutrition education curriculum that spanned preschool to high school.
It started with Chef Combo’s Fantastic Adventures where Chef Combo, a puppet character, was used to teach preschoolers simple, hands-on lesson plans focused on food and nutrition. One standout activity, “Be Clean and Be Careful,” showed kids how to wash their hands and use utensils. By letting children pour milk, cut vegetables and handle food, the program built comfort and curiosity – making them willing to try new foods.
The first edition of Food: Your Choice launched in 1977 with hands-on teacher training led by dairy councils. Training began with second-grade teachers and soon expanded. NDC staff, for example, trained all first- through sixth-grade teachers in Milwaukee. This pilot program helped refine the training model before it rolled out nationwide.
Siebenborn said farmers always had a sense of pride and passion for NDC’s work.
“I know of no dairy farmer who did not support National Dairy Council,” he said. “Anytime you talked to farmers about Dairy Council, their faces would light up. They may have questioned whether TV ads were effective but that didn’t happen with Dairy Council. That was our unifying glue that we counted on.”
surplus solution
Despite all the momentum and success of promotion, consumer demand for milk had plateaued, while production was soaring – topping 139 billion pounds in 1983.
The imbalance was unsustainable. Nearly 18 billion pounds of surplus dairy products were piling up, most of it stored in government warehouses and underground limestone caves. A question was raised among farmers, cooperatives and university economists: How many farms would have to be shut down to bring production in line with commercial disappearance?
At the time, USDA’s Commodity Credit Corporation was absorbing this excess through a longstanding price support program. But this model, which effectively guaranteed government purchases of excess dairy, was no longer feasible. A new proposal was floated: a 50-cent per hundredweight assessment on dairy farmers to help manage the oversupply.
That idea became a catalyst among many farmers across the country.
Jenkinson recalls a pivotal conversation with Colorado dairy farmer Tom Camerlo, who was a former UDIA chair and part of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) board leadership team. “If dairy farmers were smart,” Jenkinson told Camerlo, “you’d take 25 cents of that 50 and put it toward building a national dairy promotion organization.”
Camerlo was intrigued. With help from UDIA’s Sliter, they ran the numbers and a concept emerged: a self-funded, farmer-led program that would boost dairy consumption and reduce reliance on government support.
Camerlo brought the idea to the NMPF board before its annual meeting in Detroit. Jenkinson insisted that a farmer should present the proposal and others agreed. Elwood Kirkpatrick, a former UDIA chair who then served as president of the Michigan Milk Producers Association, was identified as the right voice to deliver the message.
Kirkpatrick laid out a vision and shared the impact projection that Sliter and his team compiled: a national checkoff program held the potential to move about 6 billion milk pounds off the market.
The NMPF board followed Kirkpatrick’s presentation with its full support, and a nationwide grassroots campaign ensued to educate farmers and others about the merits of a national checkoff program.
Jenkinson and other promotion leaders spoke at leadership conferences from coast to coast. Bill Boardman, former CEO of Dairy Farmers Inc., worked Washington D.C., lobbying lawmakers and fine-tuning the legislative framework. Together, they built consensus across a fragmented industry.
A critical breakthrough came with Boardman’s strategic compromise: while 5 cents per hundredweight would go to the national checkoff program, 10 cents would remain with state and local promotion organizations, giving birth to the “nickel and dime.” This concession brought local leaders on board and unified dairy farmers under a single national effort.
self-help solution
The Dairy Production Stabilization Act of 1983 passed with support from farmers through a national referendum and was signed into law by President Reagan on Dec. 23, 1983. It established a mandatory checkoff funded by producers and created the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board (NDB) to manage the initiative.
In 1984, USDA issued the formal order detailing how the program would operate, and the Secretary of Agriculture appointed the inaugural 36-member board, composed of farmers from across the U.S.
“We had to convince people who were already running successful, mandatory local programs to give up some of their control,” Jenkinson said. “And that’s where Bill Boardman really made the difference. He helped everyone see how we could do more, together.”
Higgins joined Mideast UDIA fresh out of college in 1984 and was among those who literally hit the ground running, crisscrossing Ohio and Pennsylvania to meet with farmers about the checkoff.
“This is a self-help effort,” Higgins said of his message to farmers. “We were going to sell our way out of the surplus crisis. Some farmers loved it, others hated it, but people were engaged. And over time, we proved the model could work.”
Naczi started his career with the New England-based Milk Promotion Services Inc. the day after graduating college in 1981. Among his early career assignments was generating attention for the NDB announcement at the National Mall in Washington D.C. The team brought a 40-foot mobile trailer with cows and a milking parlor and Naczi helped dignitaries, including Secretary of Agriculture John Block and his wife, milk a cow.
Adding to the excitement, the Maryland-based Mid‑Atlantic Milk Marketing Association (MAMMA) partnered with Cal Ripken Jr., who was just beginning his Hall of Fame career with the Baltimore Orioles. Ripken felt milk fit his wholesome, family-friendly image and appeared at the National Mall to sign autographs as a MAMMA spokesperson.
Festivities aside, NDB delivered on the strategy that every U.S. dairy farmer contributed to a true national promotion program.
“When NDB was formed, farmers asked, ‘How do we assess what we have?’” said Jerry Messer, a retired North Dakota dairy farmer and former UDIA board member. “There was a natural separation between NDB and UDIA – NDB had a legal duty to protect itself. It was tough at first, but eventually, people who could bridge both sides sat down and said, ‘We’re duplicating efforts and wasting money chasing the same goal. We need to work together.’”
One of the earliest visible results of the NDB-UDIA collaboration was the launch of the “Milk. America’s Health Kick” campaign in 1983.
As consumer habits shifted toward soda and juice, the campaign aimed to reposition milk as essential for a healthy lifestyle. With ads spanning TV, print and radio, the message was clear: milk isn’t just for kids – it’s fuel for a nation on the move.
Commercials featured upbeat joggers, kids playing baseball or adults doing aerobics, all pausing for a glass of milk. A cheerful voiceover highlighted milk’s calcium and protein benefits, wrapping with the now-famous line:
“Milk. America’s Health Kick. Make it part of your day.”
The campaign ran into the mid-1990s and helped milk hold its own as new beverages fought for shelf space – and consumer attention.
And while DRINC set a foundation for product research, farmer-led efforts reached a whole new level in 1987 with the creation of the Dairy Foods Research Centers. The network features some of the best and brightest dairy-focused minds at more than 20 universities that comprise six regionally based centers. State and regional organizations help fund innovative, science-backed solutions related to consumer demand and business needs and trends.
Naczi said the research network proved to be another example of being good stewards of farmers’ promotion dollars, while benefitting the interests of UDIA members.
“We’d have universities in our region come to our board with research ideas,” Naczi said. “They may have thought they had something unique but once we formed the research centers, I had a place where I could send them to see if someone else was maybe doing the same thing in Utah or Wisconsin. This allowed us to prevent duplicating efforts using farmers’ money and gave us the opportunity to share in research that our team couldn’t afford to do on our own.”
finding unity: The birth of DMI
Even with the successes of NDB and UDIA, a feeling lingered that full unity still was missing – a déjà vu of the struggles from the 1960s. Farmers saw duplication, inefficiencies and a lack of cohesion, especially on product emphasis.
“You’d hear, ‘We should be putting more money into cheese, we should be putting more into ice cream, we should be putting more into fluid milk,’” Cooper said. “That’s how the different alliances across the country operated: the West Coast did one thing, the center of the country did another. Eventually, some smart people came together and said, ‘You know what? It’s better for everyone if we look at this in a broader way.’”
Enter Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) in 1995 to pull it all together.
“The National Dairy Board recreated the same situation from before, where you had national organizations competing and chasing the same source of funding from farmers,” Kruger said. “DMI ultimately was created to resolve that. DMI just made sense.”
UDIA farmers (as well as dairy cooperative leadership) were overwhelmingly supportive of creating DMI, voting 36-0 in its favor. Some NDB board members were hesitant with concerns about sharing control of their budget with local organizations that lacked a national focus. However, they voted 29-7 in favor of creating DMI thanks to strong supporters such as California farmer Bob Giacomini, who served as NDB chair at the time.
The promise was one consistent plan implemented at impact levels across the country, elevating the voices and influence of UDIA farmers, who now had a say in a far larger budget and national strategy. UDIA farmers also gained the opportunity to serve on committees focused on specific national program areas.
DMI built a staff of experts that UDIA farmers shared the cost of funding, giving them a sense of input on the national checkoff team. DMI created natural efficiencies and helped reduce overhead costs for state and regional teams that used outside agency support for advertising. In turn, UDIA benefited NDB with boots-on-the-ground implementation of a national strategy across the U.S.
Arizona dairy farmer Paul Rovey said UDIA was very much a necessary asset to NDB – then and now.
“UDIA has been a huge benefit to the National Dairy Board because it brings local flavors, ideas and cooperation to the table that you wouldn’t have if you didn’t have that state and regional arm,” he said. “Plus, you had the ability to implement the national program on a local basis. This is why NDB needed UDIA. It’s part of the equation and is huge.”
Also in 1995, Kirkpatrick and Camerlo advocated for a national exports initiative and created the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), providing another benefit to UDIA farmers who could now engage in exports strategies and participate in USDEC-led mission trips across the globe.
One other significant change for UDIA farmers happened in 2011 with the creation of the 2.5 cents UDIA membership funding commitment. This additional money allowed for better implementation of the Unified Marketing Plan (now the Unified Plan) and opened the doors for state and regional teams and UDIA farmers to have more participation and influence on DMI strategies, such as “working with and through” leading partners like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Domino’s.
“I remember sitting in a meeting with an agency and they said, ‘you can't afford to partner with McDonald’s’ and I was so discouraged by that,” Higgins said. “Years later, when the two and a half cents idea was formed and we all committed to put money in and partner with National Dairy Board, we could play with the big boys and have a seat at the table.
“I was a big fan of that because I didn't have the resources as a small checkoff organization. You could never have an impact with a nationwide foodservice company. But when we put those dollars together, I knew we reached a point where we could accomplish something, and we never looked back.”
finding unity
And while DMI made sense, Rovey said it took time for NDB and UDIA farmer leaders to lower the temperature in the DMI boardroom. The DMI board initially consisted of 20 farmers – 10 each from UDIA and NDB. Yet there still were UDIA and NDB boards that met separately and did little to foster unity.
“You could definitely tell who was UDIA and who was NDB; you could draw a line right down the middle of the boardroom,” Rovey said. “Farmers might have agreed they needed one plan but both sides were saying ‘our way is the best way.’ Then the other side would say ‘no, our way is the best way.’ It was a tug of war.
“We really did need both sides because we could eliminate a lot of costs and get rid of conflicting messaging that each organization was promoting. We weren’t singing from the same psalm book.”
As a UDIA board member, Rovey made efforts to meet his NDB counterparts to understand their points of view. He especially spent time with NDB CEO Cynthia Carson from California and credits her ability to calm the waters with a message that the 15 cents was a collective resource everyone had a stake in.
“Cynthia said, ‘I’m gonna fall on my sword so this thing can come together,’ and she did a phenomenal job of doing that,” Rovey said. “It wasn’t about picking sides with Cynthia. It was about saying ‘we’re both gonna go in a new direction and we’re going together.’”
Eventually, DMI expanded the size of its board (40 UDIA, 37 NDB today), minimizing the need for NDB and UDIA to act in silos. As a result, the boardroom mood began to slowly change.
“You couldn’t tell who was who,” said Ryan Anglin, a former Arkansas dairy farmer who served terms on the UDIA and NDB boards. “That was very important because you can’t have a room divided.”
Charles Beckendorf, a retired Texas farmer and former UDIA board member, said the creation of DMI proved another valuable point.
“It showed that we could all get together in a larger organization,” Beckendorf said. “Most of the dairy farmers I know are good people, but we don't always see eye to eye. It was the relationships that we’d made in UDIA that formed the trust to put something like DMI together.”
Harold Howrigan, a Vermont dairy farmer and UDIA board member, reflected on his father's role in bringing DMI to reality. Harold Howrigan Sr. served on the NDB board from 1994 to 2000, including terms as vice chairman and chairman.
Harold said his father also strongly supported expanding U.S. dairy’s international presence and championed the creation of USDEC. Though his father passed away in 2009, Harold sees a lasting impact from the work of his father and other farmer leaders.
“Being involved with promotion was a natural fit for him and being among the leaders who created a foundation for today’s checkoff was an honor he enjoyed,” Howrigan said. “I remember how thrilled he was that we would be using our promotion dollars more efficiently through DMI. He saw it as a long-term win for the industry. I know my father would be proud of where the checkoff has gone.”
A new promotion path
The DMI era began with a fresh sense of direction and vibe. Tom Gallagher, former CEO of UDIA, became DMI’s first CEO and led the organization until his retirement in 2021. Ohio dairy farmer Herman Brubaker served as DMI’s first chair. Among the DMI-led changes:
- Advertising was replaced with the partnership strategy, created to increase the presence of dairy on menus through industry-leading restaurant chains.
- REAL Seal was set aside to make way for the 3-A-Day campaign promoting three daily servings of dairy.
- Fuel Up to Play 60 teamed with the NFL to get kids moving and eating nutrient-rich foods, including dairy.
- The checkoff showed its power of convening by creating the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy, a voluntary membership organization that works with leaders from across the value chain to align on pre-competitive priorities.
In a way, Rovey’s growth as a promotion leader mirrors the checkoff’s evolution. He had little interest or understanding of promotion until 1991, when he was at the county fair with his 9-year-old daughter, who was showing a cow.
That day, fellow Arizona dairy farmer Conrad Gingg – someone Rovey respected – approached him about filling a vacant UDIA seat. Rovey resisted.
“I told him I had no idea what UDIA did for me and I didn’t even know what the letters stood for,” Rovey said.
Gingg assured him that wasn’t a problem, emphasizing the importance of young farmer leadership in promotion. Rovey reluctantly agreed, later describing his early UDIA experience like “drinking from a firehose.” But he quickly became a believer – and went on to serve as DMI chairman from 2003 to 2018.
“It was a wonderful run with DMI, and I’m glad I had a close-up seat to see how it all came together,” Rovey said.
full checkoff system
Today, there are 62 promotion programs that meet the qualifications and comply with USDA’s Dairy Act and Order. Not all are UDIA members with some focusing only on promoting dairy products produced in their states.
But the unity and effectiveness of the checkoff federation is celebrated annually at the joint annual meeting of NDB, UDIA and NMPF. At the 2023 meeting, Missouri farmer Alex Peterson assumed the UDIA chair role from Hoff. In his closing remarks, Hoff offered a heartfelt analogy that captured the complex and unifying aspect of the checkoff system.
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He compared it to a high-performance Indy race car – one that only functions when every part works in harmony.
DMI, he said, is the car’s state-of-the-art chassis. But a chassis can’t move on its own. The engine that powers it? That’s the DMI staff.
Still, the car needs fuel – that’s the 15-cent assessment from dairy farmers.
Even then, it won’t go far without tires. Those, Hoff explained, are UDIA and the state and regional staffs: “This is where the rubber meets the road,” he said.
But to stay on course, the car needs a steering system and a skilled driver. That’s where the NDB and UDIA farmer leaders come in.
“It’s the dairy farmers who make sure the car drives straight, avoids potholes and handles the corners,” Hoff said.
“When you put it all together, this machine can’t be stopped. It can’t be beat.”
This content was developed by Scott Wallin, Vice President of Industry Media Relations at DMI.