Dairy Forum 2025
San Antonio, Tex.
January 27, 2025
REMARKS AS DELIVERED
Michael Dykes, President and CEO, International Dairy Foods Association:
Welcome to Dairy Forum. Everybody having fun? Everybody feeling limitless? Everybody ready to enter into politics after last night? For those of you didn't know, politics is a contact sport. I think you heard some of that last night and I think we heard references to the mafia. I think we heard all kinds of references last night. Quite interesting to hear from former speaker, Kevin McCarthy and the stories that he tells. We're going to talk about some of those kinds of things today. But most importantly, I want to say thank you for being here. Record attendance at Dairy Forum. That's because of you. Thank you for being here. Thank you to all the sponsors that are here. We have a great collection of dairy processors, of dairy farmers, of media, of dairy suppliers, people that support the industry, government officials. So thank you, thank you, thank you to all of you for being here.
Being a kid growing up on a dairy farm, I am so proud of the Groteguts and if you listen to them, I always tell people when you're enjoying a glass of milk at breakfast or you're enjoying ice cream at Christmas Eve, don't forget somebody's milking cows seven days a week, no matter the temperature, no matter the holiday. Doug, congratulations to you.
I love Dairy Forum. Dairy Forum is to me, Dairy Forum is like family. It's kind of like going to the family wedding. You're going to see certain people because Uncle Bob, Aunt Susie, they're always there. You're going to see the other side, the new in-laws, so you're going to meet some new people, but you know it's going to be fun. And this dairy industry is built on values. It goes throughout our organization, throughout our industry, and I think you heard that expressed here by the Groteguts as well.
So we are blessed. We are blessed to be in this industry. I'm excited about Dairy Forum and I'm very pleased with the program that the IDFA team has put together. We have something for everyone. We have fun. We'll start with, don't forget, tonight is the cornhole tournament, so make sure if you haven't signed up, sign up for the cornhole tournament supports the IDFA Foundation. We started that a couple years ago. Amazing work. We do stuff with the Foundation before every IDFA event. Matt Herrick, our executive vice president is also executive director of our foundation. He's working here with the San Antonio Food Bank with Feeding America and for many of our members, thank you for your financial contributions. Thank you for your food contributions. It is through your generosity. We're able to do those things to kind of give back to communities.
I don't play golf, but I understand the golf course is quite spectacular. PGA sanctioned course, the 5K run. There's also arelaxing entertaining place. And then of course there's a place where all the business occurs that's in the bars at night. So for those of you who haven't been there, I can't imagine any of you haven't found those yet, but you'll find those. I have no doubt. There's also, for those of you who come for a session, there's a session for everyone. We're excited to have Carla Harris here. Speaking about leadership managing director Morgan Stanley and of course Tom Halverson, president and CEO, CoBank give us the economic landscape. We have others here talking about supply chain, carbon markets and on technology and on AI.
We're in a strange time and as you heard last night from former speaker Kevin McCarthy, our political landscape, it has shifted and I would say is shifting and is shifting rapidly. President Trump put tariffs on Columbia on Sunday midday when they wouldn't allow planes to land carrying immigrants back to Columbia from mass deportations only to have those reversed by the Colombian president. Hours later, not only can the planes land, he will send a plane up here to pick 'em up. So let's see how well President Trump does with tariffs and how well he can leverage those into some business opportunity for our dairy industry to realize our true potential and to drive us to places we haven't been before. We must win in Washington. We're in a situation where we have one party control of the House, the Senate, the White House. We have very narrow margins. We have over 7,000 state legislators that go through elections. We have 38 states that are one-party control. We're going to need to work in a bipartisan fashion and we're going to need to be united. We're going to need to know what we want and we're going to need to be crystal clear about it and we're going to need to be united. We have taken our strategic priorities, which we've collected across all of our boards. We've submitted that to the Trump administration, and we've submitted that to Capitol Hill.
We've laid the groundwork for those kinds of things and now as the new political appointees get appointed, which will probably be about 4,000 people, and for those of you in a corporation or in a company, what happens when we have a presidential election? Think about it like this. You get a new CEO, you get a whole new leadership team and you get a whole new team reporting to the leadership team overnight. So we've got a lot of education to do across the administration. 75 members of the Congress are brand spanking new, so our state associations, our state affiliates, we need to work together. We need to count on you guys to be our advocates in the states. We need to do the same thing on the federal level, but it's going to take more than that. We're going to need your voice. We're going to need you to participate.
If you have a relationship with any of these members, if you happen to know them when they were a state legislator or a state director of agriculture, if you maybe grew up with 'em, if you went to college with 'em, whatever your connection to them is, maybe you did business with them, we're going to need your voice because your voice matters. You're the one back in the state. You're the ones back in the district. You're the ones that know what policies are important to your business. You are the one that's paying taxes. You're the ones that's employing people. So we're going to create opportunities for Washington DC fly-ins, which we do, and we're going to do flyouts, which we also do. So stay tuned. We're going to be reaching out to you and asking you to host a new member of Congress at your facilities. We'll invite the dairy industry in to have a meeting with them, a round table discussion with them so that they're crystal clear on what our priorities are. It's also going to take your leadership.
You're going to be asked for your viewpoints on things. You're going to need to stay connected to these folks, and as the conditions change, we're going to need to be thinking about our new strategy, our new approach. We're also going to have to be adaptable. We're blessed in dairy. The state of our US dairy is strong and is growing. Consumption continues to grow. You have faith and you are optimistic. In the McKinsey survey of our leadership, 70% are optimistic. About the next three years you've invested $8 billion. Clearly. Clearly you are enthusiastic and you're optimistic about the future. Our industry, our products very nutritious. We have a health halo. We have been working on that. We will continue to work on that and you'll hear more about that this morning and we had the political support.
This is Senator Roger Marshall. I don't know how many of you saw the confirmation hearing for the new Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins. He opened a glass of milk, opened a carton of milk and drank a carton of milk and encouraged her to be thinking about supporting whole milk in schools. It's that kind of advocacy. We need unexpected people saying unexpectedly positive things about dairy and unexpected places. Our US dairy is the envy of the world. Our consumption is setting records, 661 pounds a person. If you aren't eating that much dairy, you need to help a little more. Also pleased to say that even on the fluid milk under yin's leadership at Milk Pep doing a great job, we're tipping back. We may even be positive in 2024. Our exports are looking good, doing well, 2024, our processors investing and the amazing job that's happening on our farms. If you haven't been to a dairy farm in the last five years, you are out of date with what's happening on today's farms.
It is amazing what they are doing. The production levels fat for Holsteins in the upper four percents protein, it is absolutely amazing. Never underestimate the American farmer, the American dairy farmer with all the investment in dairy. I'm often asked, well Michael, we're a little concerned about this investment, and I say, well, what concerns you about investment? $8 billion and you're concerned about it. I don't know. Where's the milk? Will there be enough milk? There will be enough milk. Dairy farmers read market signals. There's a call for milk. Dairy farmers will have milk. So I am a strong believer in the American farmer, never underestimate them. So basis on this, I believe our potential is truly limitless. I'm an optimist. I'm a believer. We have so much opportunity in front of us. I'm going to share with you five opportunities that I think we need to embrace to realize our limitless potential, create value from disruption, leverage technology, elevate nutrition and wellness, and enhance the growth mindset and make it about the people creating value from disruption.
We know something about creating value from disruption. If we've lived through anything, we've lived through disruption, it's hard for me to believe sometimes. I think about Covid and I think well Covid been two years, three years. We started closing offices Friday, March the 13th, 2020. This March will be five years. It's hard to believe, it's hard to believe. You guys not only did it, cows kept getting milked milk kept getting processed, products kept getting to the shelves and consumers kept having products to buy all because of the great work of this industry all the way through from those on the farm to those in the processing plants. You also managed through inflation uncertainty in the markets. You managed through port issues. We've had situations where containers were being returned to Asia empty so they could refill with electronics to come back. We worked with the Port of Los Angeles, we worked with other ports.
We're able to get that issue resolved. We've had issues with immigration and the border. I think mass deportations will probably be the next thing that we deal with as an industry. We'll be doing a webinar for our members on how to prepare for that and what to do if you get the knock on the door. But our industry writ large just will be probably the next thing we encounter. We'll have to work our way through that and we will. We're working closely with the meat industry, which I think will be there with us. In the McKinsey survey of our leaders, 60% of executive surveys said they changed operations in response to inflation. You know how to be agile. You know how to do things to make for efficiency, greater efficiency. We responded during those disruptive times, you created new experiences. You realized eating at restaurants was going down, eating at home was going up. You changed the offering. You responded to that. You also recognize that people are more interested in what they eat. They're looking for nutrition, they're looking for health and wellness. You increased protein, you decreased the sugar, and you did all of this and you maintained affordability and quality and you've kept innovating. You've innovated on packaging, you've innovated in products. You kept pushing the system to deliver more.
At the same time, you realize this too will pass and we need to be thinking about the next chapter, the next opportunities. You invested in sustainability. You installed digesters, you're putting energy back into the grid. You helped your farmers do that with regenerative practices. You've embraced sustainable packaging. We've removed some of the plastics and the waxes out packaging to make them attractive and recyclable and as I said, you're building new capacity and you're embracing digital transformation. We're finding new ways to use technology. AI will be exploding and we'll talk more about that. Not only did you respond, consumers responded too. Per capita consumption's increasing butter is at levels we haven't seen since the fifties, and consumers also responded with their wallets. They voted with their wallets, saw double-digit growth and categories like cheese, probiotic yogurts, specialized nutrition products. 90% of shoppers have no plans to reduce their dairy product purchasing behavior and 82% of consumers showed a willingness to pay more for sustainable packaging. So consumers have been with us so we know how to create value out of disruption, offer new experiences to our consumers, invest in our technology, improve our supply chains become more resilient. We know how critical efficiency is to us, but most importantly, we know we need to be agile. We need to be adaptive. We need to continue to move with the changes we need to persevere.
The second opportunity to realize our limited potential is to leverage technology. As a kid growing up on a dairy farm, I am absolutely blown away, but what's happened with technology, the thoughts that a robot could put inflations on a cow's tets, I never thought possible. It's there. If you've not seen that, you need to go see that. It's absolutely remarkable. That's at the farm level along with all the other things happening at the farm level. If you go to the processing plants, yes, they're measured by miles of stainless steel, but there's a lot of technology in the processing plants and new technology being added. If we think about the processing plants, and one of the hallmarks and one of the things that made such a significant change for dairy globally was pasteurization 160 year old technology, been in the pasteurized milk ordinance for 60 years with what we've just experienced with avian influenza, H5N1, thank God for pasteurization, totally destroys the virus and renders our dairy products safe for human consumption.
We were at a period of time there. We've talked to the FDA two and three times a day making sure those studies were on track so that we could say with total confidence, dairy products are safe. But we've continued to evolve. We've continued to add new technologies. One of these is a new approach to destroying pathogens using UV light. Perhaps we've got applications that we can use that so that the heat doesn't destroy some of the bioactives in milk that we know and bioactives we haven't yet identified or we haven't yet marketed yet because heat tends to destroy proteins may give us a response to the raw milk craze that we have. The same attributes, precision fermentation, controlling the growth and metabolism of microorganisms and cheese making so that we optimize yield and quality digital twinning so that we can evaluate design changes. Virtually can even use it for onboarding, for training, for upskilling, and we're using technology across our industry, the cutting and the wrapping process. Robotics are replacing some of the more manual labor so that we can put our human capital and higher value task where human experience and judgment is critical. We're using AI at a fast, fast pace, but because there's so much data that we can collect and we now have the ability with a massive data centers that we can analyze that data, that we can detect product irregularities with unprecedented accuracy and speed.
We know that leveraging technology reduces our enterprise risk. We improve our food safety. Think about whole genome sequencing. What that's done for us in the testing. Our blockchain enables root cause analysis. Many different places. We are using technology, predictive maintenance, automated cleaning systems. We're improving the workplace safety. We're also using technology to help us on the consumer side. We're using AI to monitor product placement, product movement, all the aspects of marketing we're using to predict demand patterns. Think about cottage cheese and TikTok and what a change that has made. We're using it to help us with inventories. Know when peak demands are and probably to me, one of the most remarkable is for the health-oriented design meals, especially those consumers that are on GLP one drugs, their eating smaller quantities need them to be more nutrient-dense, need them to be higher protein. Just one of the examples, and you'll hear about these kinds of things here at the Dairy Forum, we're trying to work with our members in their industry to bring technology closer to you. We do that with the Dairy Tech Conference, which we do with Ever.Ag. The last one we did was in Denver and we just here at Dairy Forum released the report. You can use your iPhones. You can scan that QR code. You can download the report. It's also on our website. The thing that I find most interesting, this was a conference on AI. Guess how we wrote the report? We used AI to write the report. Absolutely phenomenal.
Here are some of the recommendations. I'll let you read the report. I'll let you get those kinds of things, but it's trying to encourage you start somewhere. Begin to think about how you have your data organized so that you can use it and if you have proprietary data, how you can protect that data. Our next conference on technology will be in Columbus, Ohio this next October, so we will continue on the technology theme and making sure that our industry has access to the latest and the greatest, and there are sessions here at Dairy Forum on technology as well. I touched on it earlier, I couldn't talk to you about technology and dairy if we didn't talk about what's happening on the day's dairy farms. The grow gets are perfect examples of this. Climate control barns, data dashboards on feed efficiency, feed intake, how many steps a cow takes may help you tell when a cow's in heat cameras in the maternity wards looking for calving and calving difficulties.
The things you're doing on genetics, the things you're doing on milk production, unbelievable in the productivity of US dairy cows, amazing. This is a picture of the Grotegut farm, 3,500 cows, doing all these things that we just talked about, but the other thing they're doing as well, they're engaging in the community and Doug didn't mention this I don't think, but he was a recipient of the first Community Builder Award by the Dairy Business Association in Wisconsin. We need to make sure our neighbors know our industry, know our product, know our story, and know that it is a positive one. So few people today are connected to agriculture and where the food comes from.
We have other issues in dairy today, especially on our dairy farms. It's another example of how we need to be agile and we need to adapt because we're going to continue to have disruptions and we're going to continue to need technology. You can track this at the APHIS websites to know exactly how many states there are and so forth. I think this is not accurate. This is 937 confirmed cases in 16 states. Just in the last two days, there's been a case in Nevada as well, so again, conditions will continue to change. The blessing here is we know pasteurization renders the virus inactive. We need to continue to do more research on biosecurity. I am of the believer we have a lot more to learn about this virus. We're not there yet in understanding its epidemiology. I have pushed, pushed for a vaccine. We've talked to the USDA about the need for a vaccine.
We have been vaccinating our cows for viruses for a long, long time. We at least need to be doing the research today, and there are vaccine companies in the audience here today that are working on this. We need to do the research so that at least it's an option for you Doug and for other dairy farmers should we need that. It needs to be efficacious, we'll need to be mindful of the trade implications. We'll probably need to be able to tell if a cow has been vaccinated versus a cow that has actively infected. I've worked closely with the National Milk Producers, Gregg Doud and I have been pushing this and pushing this. I've also been working with the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. I've worked with the poultry industry, broilers layers, turkeys. We were able to put together a letter and able to get National Milk to sign the layers designed and the Turkey industry designed saying, we need work on a vaccine.
We, since USDA kind of slowed up a little bit on that, so we need more research. There's a lot more here. We need to know about HPAI. Not only do we have HPAI in the us, we have a new screwworm in Mexico, the Mexican border shut to movement of cattle into the US because of screwworm and talking to some of our European members. We have FMD foot mouth disease in Germany. Again, we will continue to see disruption. We've developed the muscle to deal with that. We're going to need to always be agile and open and use every tool we have, and I'm a firm believer that those that leverage technology, they won't just survive. They will thrive with technology. We can't stop it. Our option is how do we leverage it?
Our third opportunity to realize a limitless potential is to elevate nutrition and wellness. We are in a period of time where health and wellness is absolutely core to our dairy industry. It's core to the food industry and we have a great story in dairy. We have a great story to tell. We need to tell it. Nothing has brought this to the forefront like RFK Jr and if you thought Kevin McCarthy was fun last night, I'd encourage you to tune into RFK's confirmation hearings Next week there'll be a million questions about all things related to Make America Healthy Again, but at dairy, are we ready for this? We should be a part of making America healthy again. We anticipated this day coming. We anticipated this prior to the 2018 Farm Bill and we've been working to get dairy seen as good for you, so when we got to the day where we had good food and bad food, we want dairy to be in the good food category.
I would tell you that make America healthy again is bigger and broader and more ingrained than just RFK Jr. There are many that believe our food system's broken. I do not subscribe to that. We've had a member of Congress, a member of the House Ag Committee from Maine write a piece just recently the Broken US Food System. It is about fat, sugar, sodium, but it's more than that. It's about pesticides. It's about PFAS. It's about small. It's about pasture fed. It is a conglomeration of things, so we're going to have to find our way through this and we're going to have to look for allies where we can find 'em. The lady that's a member of Congress who wrote this piece, the food system is broken. Strong support of Whole Milk for Healthy Kids in the schools so we will find allies where we can find allies. I'm a firm believer dairy can play a central role in making America healthy again. Our dairy companies are becoming nutrition and wellness partners to consumers writ large and again, we have a great story to tell. We have United, we've been proactive and we've told our story and when we have done that, we've been very effective. I don't think there's a better example of this than the Healthy School Milk Commitment.
USDA put out a proposal rule to eliminate flavored milk in the schools, six and a half percent of the milk you produce. We saw that and said, we got to do something about that. It was all over the view that there was way too much sugar in chocolate milk in schools, so we went to the Department of Agriculture and said, Hey, if we make an industry commitment a maximum of 10 grams, can we work with you? The answer was yes. We work with many of you 37 processors representing nearly all of the school milk sold. We made the commitment. The rule did not go through. We preserved the milk and we are well ahead of what we pledge to do. We're now at seven and a half grams of added sugar. We can do this. We have done this. We've got a great story to tell When we unite 'em, when we tell it, as I said, we're ready for this in dairy, we anticipated the good food, bad food debate.
We have been on the side of let's incentivize purchases. 43 million Americans are on SNAP when they purchase a dairy product That's incentivize 'em to purchase more because dairy is good for you because of the work we've did with healthy fluid milk incentive by at the end of 2026, we'll be in 1100 plus stores across 32 states and we're continuing Meijer and the central US has been critical putting this in all their stores. We want to expand this with Dairy Nutrition Incentive Program to take it beyond just 1% and skim to all fat levels to cheese and to yogurt. We have pieces of this in all three drafts of the Farm Bill, what passed out of the house with Mr. Thompson, a draft of the Senate side on the democratic side and a draft in the Republican side. The chairs and ranking members are all on board to support us.
We'll need you. We'll need to work together, but we're going to keep driving that. We need to take these nutrition stories to various audiences. Young parents are looking for growth and development for their own children. Active adults are looking for more protein functional benefits. Seniors are looking for stability. Mobility. I talked about GLP-1 users, protein, protein, protein and then value shoppers, and while we're on the protein story, protein is our superhero in the dairy profile and many of you are telling the protein story. If you haven't tried one, I just had one yesterday, 50 grams of protein and a milk product. I encourage you. Protein is, as I said, our super superhero. We all know that a healthy diet begins with dairy. We've got the 13 essential nutrients, three of the four nutrients that are of public health concern. We've got a great story to tell, so our path forward on health and wellness and health and nutrition is expand dairy and the diet dietary guidelines didn't get 'em complete at this time.
We have dairy in the category. We have three servings a day. We need to make sure all fat levels are recognized in the dietary guidelines, so we've got more work to do. We're working on that. We need to expand the dairy incentive with the dairy nutrition incentive program. We're working on that. The last administration cut WIC moms three gallons a month of milk. We need to restore that Whole Milk for Healthy Kids getting whole milk back into schools. I'm extremely optimistic that's going to happen. It passed in the House last Congress. We're working on that and we need to make sure dairy is included in the FDA healthy rule, so when we elevate nutrition and wellness, the possibilities are truly limitless. Embrace the growth mindset. We all know that growth is the cornerstone of any organization and you are putting your money there with the investments you're making in growth.
We have lots of opportunity for growth. The USMCA will be up for reconsideration here this year. We need to make sure we preserve the USMCA. We need to get the market access that was negotiated and we need to expand it. One of the things that came up last night with Speaker McCarthy is why do we limit it to Canada and Mexico? What do we make of the hemisphere? We just need to be thinking creatively about those kinds of things. We need to make sure China lives up to phase one agreement purchases and we need to be looking for ways to leverage the Trump tariffs. The Trump tariffs are going to come. They've already proposed 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico by February one, 10% on China. Let's see what happens when we get to February one. We're very, very close to February one. Let's see what happens.
Let's see how those play out. That's our number one and our number two market. Very well aware of this. I'm very concerned about those things. We will be monitoring those things. Let's don't get ready to jump off the cliff on tariffs just yet. Trump is a negotiator, so let's see where this goes. We do know things are going well with us from the trade perspective. We often talk about how in the Biden administration, we didn't have a trade agenda. 2024 exports are beating 2023 totals and we may be up to the 2022 record. $9.1 billion. Not only is it dollars, but it's also volume. A million metric tons, 2 million metric tons, we're on our way to three. Volume doubled in 15 years, and could triple in 20 years. This is a testament to the great work of everyone in this audience. Cheese, 42 pounds per person of cheese. If you haven't eaten your 42 pounds yet, you got time yet in 2025, you need to help raise that.
Cheese is driving the bus, but it's not just cheese as we talked about earlier. Also with cheese comes whey, another valuable product. Dairy farmers are responding as well. USDA is projecting another 20 billion pounds of milk, 250 billion pounds of milk. We're going to need to increase our domestic consumption. We're going to need to increase our export markets as well. Dairy farmers know how to produce milk. As I talked about earlier, more than $8 billion invested. We have the infrastructure, we have the opportunities. About two-thirds of this is for cheese plants, more cheese, more whey, more opportunities. Whey used to be a cost to dispose of whey today is a profit center. Some of you, even when you come to Washington, you introduce yourself as you're into the dairy byproduct business. You're into the cheese and whey product. The McKinsey survey of our executives, 80% of companies expect 3% or greater volume growth over the next three years. Optimism.
What are some of the top ways to achieve a growth mindset in 2025? Invest in innovative approaches to the markets, create some new approaches, maybe joint ventures, maybe get some push-pull on those kinds of things. Come to the table with partners, come with new ideas. Above all, speak with a unified voice. We need to be aggressive when we go after the trade. We need to be unified in what we're asking for and again, educate, educate, educate. We've got policymakers that have heard probably mostly negative things about trade and trade for some unknown reason, has a negative connotation today. We need to turn that around and demonstrate to them how important that is to people back in the district, and again, I'm bullish. I think with all this investment, with all this technology focus, a lot of this on cheese, we have yet to tap the full potential of the ingredient sector. I think there are bioactives there for which we haven't yet identified that we will, so we know that our industry fundamentals of quality, efficiency, innovation, and reliability position us well for sustained growth. I'm a believer I'm bullish on growth.
The fifth opportunity is "make it about the people." I firmly believe in people. If we unleash the creativity that's inside each and every person in our organization, make 'em feel welcome, make 'em feel valued, make 'em feel included. I think the potential is unlimited and I talked about being at Dairy Forum similar to being in a family event because we are, A lot of times when I first started, people told me, they said Dykes, dairy is like family. It is like family. There's a real reason for that. Our industry is rooted in family. Think about these farms, their family farms. It started, they're family processing plants. This is the picture of the two gentlemen, Alfred Nef and Alfred Gonzenbach, who started Valley Queen Cheese. There's many of you in this audience that are second, third, fourth generation family. When your name is on the building, when your name is on the package, when your name is on the road, on the sign beside the road, it has meaning to you. You care. You want to make sure it does well because of those before you and you want to make sure it does well for those following you.
When you're working with your family members, you're working with people you care about, it matters. It makes a difference. As our businesses grow, will you realize we don't have enough in the family to keep running the business? We got to go outside the business. We got to look for skills, talents we haven't looked for, but we've got to carry that legacy forward of those values when we're looking for new people and we're doing that. We're doing that as an industry. We are playing our role with that at IDFA in people development. One of the programs we have is our next generation of leaders. I couldn't be more proud of this group. This happens to be Cohort 1 here. We're now in Cohort Six. This is Cohort One. You'll see some faces in here that'll look familiar with you. As a matter of fact, you'll see some faces in here in this picture that are in this audience today. Colin Newman on our IDFA team has done an outstanding job of driving this NextGen Program forward. This is NextGen Four, another great group. We have expanded the NextGen to 30. We've capped it at 30. We have over 60 applicants every year. We're now in the Cohort Six and we have about 130 alumni in the NextGen program. I think we have about six or seven that have gone on to be CEOs coming out of the NextGen program.
I'm going to ask NextGen Six. I think you're here. Would NextGen Six, please stand. Congratulations to you.
It encourages you to talk to any of these NextGeners. Talk to any of the NextGen alumni. Ask 'em what it's about. Make sure you get your succession candidates into the program. The networking. It's year-long. It's a year-long program of various modules. One of those is in Washington, DC. Another effort we have underway at IDFA is Women in Dairy. Becky Rasdall on our team does many things. She's our absolute lead for trade, but she is doing a remarkable job leading this effort as well. It is a mentoring monthly sessions, a mentoring program. It is more than 1200 women strong and I want to give a real special shout out. People in this industry are very busy, but you're also very giving of your time. We have a lot of you and the audience that are mentoring young women in our industry. That takes time. Thank you.
Thank you to all of you who are mentors out there. That's not an easy thing. Thank you. Our IDFA Women and Dairy won an award at the International Dairy Federation last year for the 2024 State of Women and Dairy Report that we put out. I'm also pleased to say we just put out the 2025 State of Women in Dairy. You can scan this QR code. You can download this if you like. It'll also be available on our website. I'm going to take you through two or three takeaways from this. 56% of our frontline workers say they missed out on a raise or promotion or opportunity because due to their gender, 33% of female, 8% of male respondents feel the same way.
56% of respondents said they had no access or awareness of mentoring programs with their employer, and 55% of women believe that their gender negatively impacts their pay compared to 5% of men. These are things we as an industry can address and we can fix. So some of you will say, well, I'm not sure that's my company. Perhaps it isn't. This is a broad survey. I just encourage you to make sure we're doing all the things we need to do for 50% of the workforce, the women, and the creativity that we need. This is the IDFA Women's Summit. This will be our second one in March. We've upped it from 50 to 75. Fortunately, the one in March has already sold out. Shows you how much interest there is in development opportunities for women in our dairy industry.
Lots of things. You're doing lots of things. Why are we doing that? Because we recognize that today's workforce has different needs. It's more than just a competitive salary. When I say competitive salary, we are competing with other sectors for workforce. They want flexible schedules. Parental leave. Think I talked to someone the other day, had 18 different shift schedules would've been unheard of years ago. Pay equity, mentoring, training and development from our survey. The number one driver of intent to stay is recognition, recognizing job-well-done awards. Those are things easy to do. They mean things to employees. We also know that we need different skill sets. Today we're going to have to go beyond the traditional ag food skill sets. We're going to need people out interfacing with the public on the social side, telling our story. We're going to need problem solvers, critical thinking skills.
We're going to need curiosity, adaptability, and above all, we're going to need technical and digital skills as we embrace and leverage more and more technology. At IDFA, we are working to advocate for workforce reforms, especially in the VISA programs. Yes, H2A is important. Yes, we need to make that year-round for dairy. It doesn't work because we're not seasonal and we need to get that modified. So it applies also to processors, but you're using other visa programs other than just H2A. You're using visa programs for engineers and scientists and so forth. As we do more on mass deportations, we're going to have to find some way to make the legal process work. We need a workforce.
Our commitment to people extends to our communities, your workforce. They're pleased when they have time to volunteer with the local community food bank. When you contribute to the local community sports efforts, those are the places they live. Those are the places their children go to school. It's more than the paycheck. They want to see that you care. So when we make it about people, when we unleash the human potential, we open doors to extraordinary achievements. I truly, truly believe this. I believe it was all my fiber. There's just so much goodness in people. I often say that I don't think anyone ever wakes up in the morning to go to work, to screw something up. Just think about that. Why would you set alarm? Why would you get dressed? Why would you go there if your intent is to screw something up? Most of the time it's a failure to communicate.
People are well intended. We make it about people. Good things happen. So I've gone through five opportunities to realize our limit is potential. I believe it. I believe with every fiber in my body, and I hope that maybe just this morning I've shared with you some thoughts, some comment that maybe you'll leave dairy form and you too will believe that we have a limitless potential and you'll have something to take back home. Talk with your team about how do we get there. So thank you. Thank you for being here. Enjoy the rest of the Dairy Forum. We couldn't do this without you. Thank you very much.