WE Are Undeniably Stronger
One of my goals as Chair of Dairy Management, Inc. is to promote unity among ourselves as moving forward is not nearly as productive if we cut each other off at the knees. Another goal is to better communicate the checkoff story to farmers who are not involved or familiar with what’s happening at DMI.
Life moves at an amazing pace and the checkoff life is no different than our own. Programs, partnerships, research, exports, innovation and communications are moving quickly and I will be the first to admit, it is a lot to keep track of.
A step that I believe will help achieve a bit of both those goals is a blog. I contemplated this idea for several weeks as I have tried blogs before and they always fall off the hay wagon. I do not want this blog to fall into that category, I want to stay committed to the communication.
However, communication is key and wins out in this case. I will take a checkoff topic for each blog, hoping to eventually complete the checkoff circle. Just in time to start it over again.
We need to come together as an industry, as a people and as a community of farmers. We don’t need to always agree, differing opinions are healthy. We do, however, need to respect each other’s differences and treat each other with kindness as we understand the truth of what is happening with checkoff.
I am telling myself this as much as anyone.
Our industry has tremendous opportunity to thrive, both globally and domestically. We are resilient, determined and we love our dairy farming lifestyle. That opportunity will turn to gain as we become undeniably stronger together.
I truly believe the best is yet to come for our dairy industry and I look forward to discussing it with you.
If you would like to leave me a comment, please do so below or you can reach me via talktomarilyn@dairy.org.
Marilyn Hershey, DMI Chairperson
