9 Dairylea president predicts co-op upswing
KIAMESHA LAKE, NY -
The president of Dairylea
(Cooperative told delegates to
Dairylea’s 61st annual
meeting they can anticipate
a future of, strengthened
performance and
achievement of goals.
The Cooperative, at its
annual meeting last week,
installed new management
for its operations, financial
and marketing activities
about six months ago
following the development of
a modern membership
equity program last year.
Clyde Rutherford, com
pleting his second one-year
term as president of the
cooperative, said in his
-annual report, “Dairylea is
definitely moving ahead
with speed and direction. We
have at least three new
products under test. We have
a realistic financial plan. We
have a Consumer Products
Division headed by people
who have proved they know
how to put products into the
marketplace successfully
and profitably. We have joint
venture projects developing
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cooperatives.
“We are now using
marketing goals for all
products in every sales
location. We have an in
centive plan to reward those
who contribute to the
profitability of Dairylea. We
can and will get out of any>
operation which doesn’t
either serve a necessary
membership function or isn’t
profitable.
“We can and will change
the entire structure and
strategy of Dairylea without
a backward glance if it is
necessary or desirable to
restore our strength and
financial viability,”
Rutherford said.
“And we will do it without
sacrificing the underlying
principle upon which the
Dairymen’s League was
founded in 1907-namely, to
establish and maintain a
profitable market for the
milk of our farmer
members. Other worthy
goals led to the formation of
the League. I believe,
however, that the
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At annual meetin.
restoration of Dairylea as
the strongest, best-financed,
most successful milk
marketing organization in
the Northeast will ultimately
serve the original
Dairymen’s League goals.
“The price we get for our
farm milk...admittedly
improved in the past two
years...is sitting on a rather
fragile foundation. It’s a
foundation made up of equal
parts supply-demand, in
ternational politics, and
federal bureaucracy. A case
could be made that the least
motivating part of the
pricing complex is supply
demand. It’s there, and it
plays a role, but how do you
isolate it from the politics?”
he asked.
“The dairy marketing
organizations which plan for
the future, who set up their
milk supply, their marketing
program, their product mix,
their joint ventures, their
total utilization of milk in a
way that reduces govern
ment participation to a
fractional level will survive.
Those who keep on doing
business in the same old way
will disappear,” he said.
“Farmer-members of
cooperatives in the Nor
theast have become so ac
customed to crisis living that
they have not expanded their
thinking to take a look at the
direction in which their co-op
is headed. This is a world of
change.
“In five years, perhaps
less, our industry, par
ticularly here m the Nor
theast, is going to be a lot
different than it is today,” he
predicted.
“We should all work at the
job of holding down the rate
of inflation by using money
sensibly, but it is foolish and
useless to let the concept of
constantly rising prices
paralyze our ingenuity and
undermine our success.
Inflation is with us and it will
continue to be with us very
likely for the rest of our
lives.
“Dairy farmers keep
hearing that the production
consumption inbalance is
cyclical and we will work our
way out of the present heavy
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production pattern because
the average production per
cow just can’t increase that
much more.
“This kind of living with
wrong assumptions is what
has kept the blinders on the
milk industry for so long
while our competitors
passed us by.
“When we look at our
cooperatives, our markets,
our management, and our
future in the light of what is
happening rather than what
has happened...we must
come to different decisions.
Dairylea is doing that. It is
tough work, but it is getting
done,” Rutherford said.
“We cannot and will not be
a ‘disposer’ of milk. We
cannot accept as fact that
the public will continue to
want even as much fluid,
whole milk, as they now
consume. We cannot sit by
and let the competition do all
the innovating, leaving us
with the leftover, shrinking
market.
“There are better times
ahead for our organization
and its members. lAem
bership is stabilizing. Our
milk supply is adequate, our
schedule of deductions is
headed downward, our
marketing program is
headed upward, our cash
position is improving, the
bank is pleased with our
progress, ‘Operation Grand
Slam,’ our plan for the
immediate future is
working.
“Our short-range sales
blitz has been effective in
moving products, our in
ventories are down, our
unused property is being
moved, our sales training
and incentive programs are
in place, morale among
members and employees is
steadily improving,”
Rutherford said.
“The next ten years could
be the best ones of our
lives,” he said.
Dairylea, with over
$408,000,000 in net sales
during the fiscal year ending
last March 31, 1980, has
operations in seven states
and markets nearly 42 billion
quarts of milk a year for its
farmer-members.