Dairy Forum 2026
Palm Desert, Calif.
January 26, 2025
REMARKS AS DELIVERED
Michael Dykes, President and CEO, International Dairy Foods Association:
It's Dairy Forum 2026. Can you believe we're in 2026 already? Woo! So good to see all of you here. Record crowd again this year, we broke 1,200 people. So you've got 1,199 of your best friends here. Some of you know better than others. But you got a lot of people here to meet. So enjoy Dairy Forum. You know, when I look out here, I see faces of dairy farmers. Congratulations, Josh. I see faces of dairy farmers, I see processors, I see suppliers.
I see the most determined, resilient leadership in American food and agriculture. Everyone in this room is a partner in the most powerful story in the nation today. The story of the dairy industry. So thank you for being here. You are stewards of a powerhouse industry. You're putting nearly $800 billion of economic develop into local communities. The places we live, the places we work to make them stronger, more vibrant. You're providing 3 million jobs, not just a statistic, but a paycheck for families. Meaningful. Very, very meaningful. You're sustaining the legacy for 24,000 plus dairy farms for the next generation. And our 1200 plus processing facilities are producing healthy, wholesome, nutritious meals for people all around the world.
I'm so proud of the IDFA team for the work, the effort they put into this year's program at Dairy Forum 2026. It brought together some of the best and the brightest to discuss topics like health and wellness, which we know is a major consumer focus. Everyone wants to lead a healthy, wholesome life and focus on longevity. We'll discuss things like the markets and the pricing and what's going to happen in the Q1, Q2, the rest of 2026. The policy environment. We started last night with a little discussion on the policy environment. Anybody in here think Rahm Emanuel's a little wishy washy on what he thinks about different things? It's pretty crystal clear. Remember that name. I predict you're going to see that name again in November at the presidential elections. And you'll get to make up your own mind of what you want to do.
We'll talk about trade and the importance of trade in the future, how we try to grow our industry and the need for trade and export markets. And workforce, we know we need a workforce. We know workforce challenges are paramount. We had a little bit of discussion last night about immigration, how important that is. And we'll talk about sustainability. And we heard of what's happening on today's farms in those terms. But I encourage you download the app. Attend every session. Make every connection relationship building opportunity you can and accelerate your leadership in 2026. Before I move forward with 2026, let's take a look back at 2025. I would characterize 2025 as one of our greatest years for American dairy.
We've had four years of record consumption. We're consuming about 651 pounds of dairy. We're eating a lot more of our dairy, 651 pounds of dairy per person. Quite phenomenal. Because of our efforts, because of our focus on health and wellness and the superior quality of protein we have on our dairy products. We have dairy has topped all categories at the retail at $80 billion, and our processing industry has invested $11 billion in new processing facilities, 50 plus projects in about 20 different states. And despite all the discussion we've heard about tariffs and trade and Carney on again off again, and we know the struggles that many other commodities are having. Dairy has had a good year, $9 billion in exports in 2025, second to a record year in 2020 for.
We have momentum on our back. We're in a new era for dairy. Dairy was made for this opportunity. We've got a nutritional profile on protein. We've got the healthy fat. Finally, the science on fats coming forward. We're innovating our product offerings. Amazing the things we're doing with the quality milk coming from today's farms, the various ingredients, the bioactives, all the enzymes, all the proteins. Absolutely amazing. We reclaiming relevance for some of our dairy staples milk, cheese, yogurt. How about cottage cheese? 20% growth in the last five years. Since 2020. We're investing capital in our farms and processing facilities. And we have dominated, absolutely dominated, the national conversation when it comes to dairy.
Our theme for this year's Dairy Forum is United to Win for Dairy. Not simply a tagline, but a fundamental belief in our future and the importance of being united to grow, to thrive, to secure our freedom to operate and to make sure that this is a thriving industry for future generations. We know that when we unite, we are stronger. We know when we speak with one voice to policymakers, to the media, to consumers. We command attention. We know when we are united, we can move mountains. As we grow our industry, as we capitalize on the opportunities ahead of us. I'm going to share with you five strategies that I think will be critical to securing our future for the next generation.
The first one is health. As I said earlier, we know the consumer today is focused on health and wellness. We know protein is key among those, and we know we have a quality product when dairy, because we know dairy delivers complete, natural, affordable nutrition. We were the original functional food. That is a competitive advantage for us in dairy, and we need to make sure that we're leading with that effort. We have tried to take that effort, focus competitive advantage around health and partner with all of you in the dairy industry to make commitments so that we are seen as proactive leaders and to make America healthy again.
We've come together. We've united around a commitment on school milk that we would, lower the sugar in school milk. We expanded on that by lowering by removing the artificial colors in the school meals from milk, cheese and yogurt. And we took that one step further, and we eliminated its artificial colors and retail ice cream as a result of the effort we're doing to position dairy as good for you. We're seeing continuous growth in consumption. Amazing. Last four years we've been setting records. As I said earlier, we are seeing growth at the retail sector, $80 billion. We've topped all other categories. We're putting the products out there for the GLP-1 users. We're putting the recovery beverages in the marketplace. We're coming with lactose-free. We're coming with A2. We're coming with fewer calories, clean label, fewer additives.
And another result we've seen, which I would say many of you in this room probably thought we'd never, ever see Dietary Guidelines recommending dairy at all fat levels. That is the efforts on research and science, and continue to put that in front of the policy makers to be at the beginning to recognize the health of saturated fats and dairy and being a part of the Dairy Matrix. Another result, we saw that again, I'm going to say many of you, maybe many of us, thought you'd never see took 15 years in the making. But Whole Milk for Healthy Kids bringing in 2% and whole milk flavored and unflavored. Back to our schools.
Absolutely phenomenal results. Not only do we pass this, we passed it twice in the House of Representatives. Last time we passed it without an objection, suspension of the rules. And we passed it through the U.S. Senate on unanimous consent. I tell everyone, if you've been watching any bit of politics, I don't know if we could pass what time of day it is through the Senate on unanimous consent. But we were able to pass Whole Milk for Healthy Kids. We have been leveraging this health halo for dairy with all of our communications, all of our investments, and getting the message out. And as a result, over the last year, we've increased consumer perception that dairy is part of a healthy lifestyle by five percentage points. Amazing. We are now seen over alongside fruit and vegetables as good for you, which is where we want to be.
You can also see and I've talked about the consumers focus on protein. You notice who's out who the profiles and increase for these others. It's the protein consumers are clearly after protein. But just as we are leaning into this health messaging and conveying the health messages, we know we have detractors and we have some policy makers that want to come forward with undefined terms like ultra processed foods, where we define where their food is healthier, not just simply based on processing steps. We've been adamantly opposed to that. We think of the health benefits. The nutritional value of food should be based on sound science and the nutritional density of the product. We know that dairy is pasteurized, fortified, and packaged to be accessible to consumers around the world and that we are part of a of the solution to a healthy lifestyle.
We're not a problem to be addressed. Same thing goes for front of packs. Labeling wine to put warning labels on foods simply based on processing. We are opposed to those will continue to be and will continue to work that. The second strategy is if we're going to grow our market, we're going to invest in our market and ensure that we have a thriving dairy industry for the future. We got to be focused on seeking and securing new markets for our products.
We are seeing historic investment at the farm level. We heard some of that from the Innovative Farmer of the Year award, recipient. In just a few minutes ago, but the farm focus on genetics that has been there for the last several years, combined with the advanced efforts in nutrition, making sure we’re getting the nutrients into the cow are critical to optimizing production and quality of component. How the component laid in milk is unparalleled. Absolutely remarkable. And what are we seeing? We're seeing Holsteins, milk, light jerseys. We're seeing four-two, four-three. And I just asked this gentleman here a while ago when he's at four point two, four-three himself. Some will say they're higher than that. And as we're increasing butterfat we're also increasing protein.
And as I said earlier this is high quality milk component laden. I've always been a believer that we have value in the fractions in this milk. And it will be beyond just the gallon, just the glass of milk. But it'll be the individual fractions that are in there. And with all the investment in the technology and our new infrastructure, we'll be able to extract those high value products, proteins, the enzymes, the bioactive. And not just at the farm. Investment is also being matched by our investment by our processors and the investment by the processors. $11 billion as a further statement to the belief in the future of this industry and the willingness to invest in it. And I remember when we first came out with this slide, we had lots of people talking about, well, I don't know, will there be enough milk?
Will there be enough milk? Won't be enough milk. And people tried to explain to me cash and breeding heifers and how long it takes. And gestation period of a cow 282 days. Those kind of things. And I said, you know, I'm familiar with that, but I believe in the productive capacity American farmer always have. I always will. And they will come through with milk. If there's a market signal for milk, they will come through with milk. And lo and behold, they have come through with milk for sure.
If we want to grow, we have four fundamentals that we must pursue it to grow our dairy market. We've got to continue to promote message the high protein leadership we have. We are blessed with a product called dairy. When it comes to the protein, we know we have culturally diverse customers that we need to appeal to. We need to be thinking about our fortified yogurt for our Middle Eastern customers. We need to think about Hispanic cheese for our Hispanic customers, maybe paneer cheeses for some of our Southeast Asian customers. We need to make sure we appeal into the culture diversity of our consumer base. We also know that many of our consumers are focused on digestive health, gut health. They're looking for clean labels. They looking for lactose-free.
They're looking for fewer calories. They're looking for a2 milk. We need to make sure we've got products for them with our technology, with our capabilities. We can produce products to fit every consumer’s need at every stage of life. And we also know that many of our consumers are concerned about where's our product come from. How is it produced where the animals will care for all of the things that are included in sustainability? And just a graph to prove that our farmers do produce milk. Our farmers know how to produce milk. If we look at this, the projection is another 27 billion pounds of milk by 2034. That means with the milk production we have, with the investments in the farms, with the investments in our processing facilities, we have the capability to expand our markets and reach for consumers around the world.
So where are we? Where are our exports? What are our export destinations looked like from 2020 to 2024? Our three big markets, the biggest bubble on the graph Mexico, Canada, China has been in there as well. Southeast Asia with all the political, geopolitical uncertainty, volatility with China. We've got 50% of our exports in those three countries. We need to be looking at diversifying. So we don't have too many eggs in one basket. We have lots of places around the globe where we have some existence. We have lots of places we can grow those markets, but we need to be thinking about expanding. We did quite well, as I said, $9 billion in 2025. How do we continue to grow that? How do we diversify our markets?
We'd look at three places. Lead in Latin America. We need to continue to nurture and grow the Mexican market. We need to leverage the cash to draw free trade agreement with Central America, where we always already have preferential market access. We’ve got more product moving into Chile. We need to continue to grow in other Latin American countries.
We need to establish a middle East North Africa gateway. We need to leverage the low tariff associated with the UAE and leverage that across the distribution across the Gulf Coast. We need to move into North Africa, especially Algeria, maybe with more bulk, bulk ingredients. We may do more high end consumer facing goods in the Middle East and we must seize the opportunity in the Asian countries.
Probably the most significant rising market for us today, for dairy is Indonesia. It's a favorite destination. I always liked when we were talking about supply chain issues during Covid, and you talked about getting shipments in containers and talked to people about where is it going? Well, I really don't want to say where it's going. Well, come to find out, they're all ones. Most of them are going to the same place. They're all trying to get to Indonesia. It's a rising middle income. It's a great it's a great opportunity for us. Our U.S. negotiators are there trying to remove barriers, non-tariff trade barriers and tariff trade barriers working in Malaysia Cambodia. We have some opportunities there. So what are our next steps on trade to expand our market reach?
We see one of the immediate needs is we need to correct and preserve the USMCA. It's critical to us. I never thought we'd see it, but we're beginning to hear more and more discussion about maybe, do we need to do all that agreement away, despite Trump calling it the best thing that's ever happened? It's still some pressure that maybe we need to eliminate every U.S. We need to keep it. We just need to correct and preserve some of the aspects of the USMCA.
There are a lot of trade discussions, trade negotiations going on all around the world today. We often hear pronouncements about some major accomplishment in one of the world areas. We don't have many details on exactly what those are. When will they be finalized? When will those. When will the implementation dates occur? How will they happen? We need that. We need to get those done so we can get more certainty around those markets. And as I said earlier, we are already in a lot of places. We just need to expand. We need to we need to expand into those in those new and emerging markets. As we do this. We will probably get into areas, especially with high valued ingredients, where we may not have the traditional cold chain distribution that we're accustomed to, which means we probably need to be investing in more shelf stable, especially for specialized high value products.
The third strategy I want to review with you is technology. Technological innovation. We know that you're facing fierce competition, rising operational cost today, and technology is the key to increasing our efficiency. Our key to being able to innovate new products. And we know that that technological revolution is already beginning on today's farms. People tell me that they know about dairy farming today. And I say, okay, you know about dairy farms. So you have a farm? No, I grew up on a farm. Okay. Well, when's the last time you owned a dairy farm? Oh, God. Been years. I would tell all of you hadn't been on a dairy farm the last five years. You have no idea what's happening on today's dairy farms. It's amazing what's happening. Our cows have smart collars. We probably know more about our cows. And we know about most of you. We know how many steps they take. We know what their milk production is, or we know what they're eating. We know what they don't feel well. We know where they are in a cycle. We know when it's time to breed them, to maximize performance and to maximize production. We have robotic milkers for those of us who used to put inflations on cows’ udders. I never thought a robot could ever do that. If you have not seen, that is quite amazing. They do it quite well repeatedly, little over three times a day. Increases cow comfort, increases production and we're seeing we're seeing all of this data that we have on the farm, the management of the farm coming into an AI-driven herd management system so that our farm today are managed with precision management based on data, and that is attractive to the next generation who want to see data to be the linchpin, to be the center of decision making and critical thinking.
They see a clear pathway to be on the farm and be in production. We're also seeing how sustainable, how technology enhances our sustainability efforts. We got to be able to measure, we got to be able to monitor the things that we are doing, and we got to be able to tell our story. On sustainability. And the dairy industry has done some great things. We have been out there first in the food and ag sector with commitments, a commitment to be greenhouse gas neutral by 2050, dairy industry organizations are coming together. They're partnering in different platforms, one being Dairy. Methane Action Alliance is one example because we know to make the contributions to sustainability, we going to make we got to focus on one of the critical factors.
And that's methane. And we're doing that. We're doing that with the platforms when we're investing in new feed additives. We're investing in advanced genetic selection, where we're looking at all the many ways we can control methane and make positive contributions to build greater consumer trust. And although sustainability may have shifted, the focus may have shifted somewhat with this administration. It is still important to our global customers and regulatory agencies around the world. And politics is a pendulum. We are swinging. We will swing one way or swing the other. We need to continue on our efforts on sustainability, and we're doing the same thing in our processing units where we're monitoring energy use, water use waste. We're doing more with recycling.
At its essence, we know that sustainability is equal to efficiency. More units of output per unit of input. How do we get more with less? If we look at the U.S. dairy industry in the last 18 years or so, we've increased production per cow by 28%. We've decreased the emissions 13%. More milk, less emissions. An amazing sustainability story. I like charts and graphs. I like numbers, but I like to be able to put that into some kind of context. How significant is that? That how significant is that? What does that really mean? So today our dairy farmers produced 226 billion pounds of milk with 9 million cows, 9 million cows, 226 billion pounds of milk. If we took to production average production per cow of India, and we tried to produce 226 billion pounds of milk in the US, we would need 61 million cows.
Does that tell you something about efficiency? Can you imagine 61 million cows running over Wisconsin, California, Idaho, those kinds of places? So when people talk to me about dairy and our efficiency and our sustainability, I'm all ears. We're doing a fantastic job. Our dairy cows are also contributing to the power equation. As we get more AI, as we have more data centers, we have an increasing appetite for power. Our cows are helping us transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. We have over 350 active biodigesters while the anaerobic biodigesters in the country. And we're doing more with renewable energy, especially in the states where we have a low carbon fuel standard. Other piece of that we're doing with our byproducts permeate high in lactose using as a feedstock for distilleries, we use as feedstock for biofuels. So we're doing some amazing things in this area.
We're also using more technological innovation in our products. We know that our consumers are monitoring their blood pressure, their glucose, their sleep quality with wearable sensors. We have more and more data somewhat similar to our cow collars. We also know we have personalized, microbiome stuff. We also know that we are using AI in our processing facilities so that we can predict when maintenance is coming, when maintenance is due, to avoid costly delays and avoid product waste. We also know in addition to protecting our physical assets, we have need to protect our data and our proprietary assets against cyber criminals. We're doing that as well. At IDFA, we have a dairy technology innovation network, where the leading IT leaders from our different organizations come together and discuss all the things that are happening in the world of it, how to advance AI across the organizations, and how to protect against cyber criminals.
We're also using that in food safety so that we can trace with sensors throughout the processing facility, so that we know that each product we put out to the consuming public has been produced in a safe manner, packaged in a safe manner. We're doing it in the product. As I mentioned earlier, we're doing wearable sensors. We have more data. We know the individual needs of consumers. We know those who are focused on performance beverages. We know those that are on GLP-1 drugs and sending warning protein. High protein, nutrient dense products. We know the nutritional needs of our seniors. We're using our AI-driven nutrition platform so that we can produce the products demanded by individual, specific consumers at every stage of their life.
We're also using technological innovation to narrow the distance between our plants and our consumers. We need to be there early. We know that we can't delay innovation for years when our competitors are moving in. Once we got to move and we got to move quickly. So we need to know where to move to. What's happening at the at the critical decision points for consumers? We need to understand that we're doing that through technological tool, social listening.
We're partnering with retail, food service, point of sale data to be able to place our products and open optimally place them and optimally price them for consumers. And we're making sure we are at the center of personalized medicine. So we've got the products for the consumers of the consumer's needs that meets their needs, their specific needs. A fourth strategy is focusing on our people and our communities. We know, and we have always known that the people are our most important asset. We can collect capital. We can buy land. We can buy concrete, we can buy steel. We can build farms. We can build factories. But we need talent inside those to operate those and make those run. And we need to make sure that we're focusing on people and communities and that we're building the reputation as dairy is one of the best places to work.
We know we have workforce challenges. Every year, McKinsey does a survey of our top leaders and workforce challenges are always in the top three. We know that we're seeing a slowing. And we talked about this last night. We heard this from Rahm. We're seeing a slowing of the birth rate. If we change our immigration policies we're going to see declining birth rates in the US, in the developing world.
Africa will become one of the most populous nations in the world. Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute did a study looking at manufacturing skill needs and what we have a skills gap by 2030 through 2033. They're predicting a 1.9 million skill gap shortage. And we know that immigration reform is needed. We have no idea when that's going to happen. But I totally agree with Rahm Emanuel. It will take real leadership to step forward, to make that commitment that we do something about this. Perhaps we're getting closer. And if we believe that it will take someone who realizes this might be the end of their power struggle, maybe we'll see that at the end of this Donald Trump term.
So we know we need to always be increasing dairy's appeal. We need to make sure everyone knows they can have a career in dairy. Regardless of their background, dairy is high tech. It's a data-driven industry. We also know that it's not just a job on an assembly line. It's a purposeful job, a product to feed people around the world. And you can live and do well in the local communities because dairy is critical to the local economies with all the contributions we're making economically and that our industry is focused on, addressing climate change, producing things in a sustainable way.
Our organizations are investing in workforce development. Many of our organizations are doing comprehensive training programs to train new employees on the technology, and also upskill our existing employees. We know we have to pay competitive wages, but we also know we've got to match. We got to have a wage that's commensurate with the skill level to perform the jobs in our new advanced plants and our new advanced farming operations, and we need to provide a supportive work environment.
We need to demonstrate to employees that we care about them. We care about their well-being. We need to make sure we're providing employee assistance programs, and we need to make sure that there's a clear pathway that you can see your way forward from an entry level job to the plant manager to the VP of operations. How are you leading in this charge? We saw the need. We saw that we're going to see turnover in leadership. One of the programs that we've had the most success with is our NextGen Leadership Program. We're now in cohort seven. We take about 30 each year out of over 60 applicants. And we clearly know that the leadership in the dairy industry is sending us succession candidates.
I think we've had 6 or 7 CEOs emerge out of the first cohorts. So today we have Cohort 7 with us. So I'd like to ask Cohort 7 to stand so you can see the leadership of the dairy industry in the future. And I'd ask any other next gen alumni to stand as well. We have others in here. Any other next gen alumni? Thank you. Every time I'm with this group, I'm reminded our industry is in good hands. We got we've got great leadership coming. Another thing we've been doing is Women in Dairy. We have over 1250 Women in Dairy. We have mentoring circles. Many of the women in our dairy organizations are giving back, mentoring women as they are entering the dairy world.
We have a Women's Summit. We provide leadership. We take both Women in Dairy and our NextGen to the Hill for advocacy. In February, we're going to be launching a group of 25 trained, ready to go rapid response advocates for dairy. We're also contributing through our Food Safety Education Portal. Education materials such that you could get a certificate in listeria control. And we're providing educational material to the safe ice cream.org website.
We are also amplifying our community and social impact. I am so proud of the work that we've done with the IDFA Foundation since 2022. Through the collective efforts, the Foundation, all of our members with contributions of product, financial contributions and contributions of volunteering your time. We have served over 1 million meals to food insecure families. Absolutely phenomenal since 2022.
That's only possible because of the generosity of each and everyone in this dairy industry. Before every dairy ADFA event we do something with for either Rise Against Hunger or Feeding America at a local food bank. This year at this Dairy Forum will be the largest such contribution we've made to date since 2022. So again, thank you for all you do and thank you for your generosity.
Also, individual organizations within the dairy industry are also giving back. And every time product employee volunteers, if we look at this, Chobani is giving back through the Chobani Impact. Schreiber just celebrated 80th anniversary with major contributions to food banks. DFA through DFA cares helping in disaster and cold chain storage. Sargento. Touchdowns for hunger. Also for employees volunteering their time. Habitat for humanity 35. New homes. Danone and all their efforts to leverage our B Corp status. All their work in regenerative agriculture. And Blue Bell with our work with Make-A-Wish Foundation. Tremendous outpouring of support and amplifying that in the local communities. Our fifth strategy, if we want to grow and expand our markets, we've got to have supportive policy that ensures our freedom to operate our social license.
And we know in these challenging times and politically divisive times, it takes a lot to get the attention of the policymakers. But I have several examples of how we have come together as an industry, and we have gotten their attention, and we've made a positive difference for dairy. I'll go through three such examples with you. We saw in the Biden administration discussions about eliminating flavored milk in school because it had too much sugar in it. That's about six, seven, 6 or 7% of the milk sold. Talking to our leadership, we decided we couldn't afford that risk. So what do we do? We created a commitment that had a clear timeline 2025 2026 school year. This school year and we commit to a maximum of ten grams of added sugar. Took that to the Biden administration to USDA. Got an agreement. We could make the commitment. We could save flavored milk in school. And I'm pleased to tell you this beginning of this school year, all 37 school milk providers, which is 95 plus percent of the school milk in this country, came together. Everyone met the ten grams and on average we're at 7.2g of added sugar.
Absolutely phenomenal. 60% reduction from where we've been in recent years. Another example in the Trump administration, we saw the laws passed in West Virginia. We saw this patchwork. We saw this focus on concern about certified artificial colors. We came together, 54 processors committed that we remove certified artificial colors in school meals, milk, cheese and yogurt. That got the attention of Secretary Rollins. Seeing our industry step forward and a proactive manner to address an issue. We further extended that with our ice cream community when we committed, we teamed up with 44 U.S. ice cream companies that we would eliminate certified artificial colors by the end of 2027, which represents over 90% of the ice cream sold in the US. Got major attention, got 11,000 news media.
We reached almost 1.5 billion people. So we come together and we leverage the health benefits of this product. We are seen as a partner in making America healthy again. We can make a difference. And I always believe that a picture is worth a thousand words. I don't think there's a better description of elevating dairy in the eyes of policymakers than this picture.
This is again farmers, processors, suppliers standing, and the Secretary of Agriculture's office at USDA with Secretary Rollins, Secretary Kennedy and FDA Commissioner McCarthy. Absolutely phenomenal. We have been leveraging that goodwill for policy successes. When we do those kinds of events, when you make those kinds of commitments, when we unite, when we command attention, we're able to do things like Whole Milk for Healthy Kids. We're able to see the things like Dietary Guidelines recommended for fat, dairy. And another thing that we've used that for is during the Biden administration, they cut 7 million WIC moms, three gallons of milk per month. Despite our discussing that with them about how we thought they should be a better way that happen. But fortunately, with this last appropriations, we were able to restore the three gallons of milk back to the 7 million WIC moms for the benefit. Another great win. Thank you.
Those are how we are leveraging this on the federal level. We're also leveraging the health benefits with the state makers. We are seeing an absolute deluge of state efforts we did in 2025. We're already seeing 80 plus bills introduced in state legislatures in 2026. I've already talked about ultra processed foods, but we're seeing it on SNAP waivers. We have 42 million Americans that participate in the SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The old food stamps. And we have states that are asking USDA to give them the right to prohibit certain foods that Snap participants can purchase. And the focus has been to make sure that SNAP participants can't purchase sodas and candy. We have 18 states that have already been granted waivers by USDA.
And I'm pleased to say that we have protected dairy from being on that list of prohibited products, both across the board, including ice cream, our milks, our cheese, our yogurts. The place we spend a lot of time is to watch the state legislatures pass these bills around sweetened beverages. Someone has to define what that is and that usually comes down to the implementing regulations. And we've been able to work with them to make sure that our flavored milks are not included in sweetened beverages. The other place that we spend a lot of work is what's the candy bar? And we are working to make sure that that doesn't include a protein bar, because we preserve the milk protein and our dairy. We're winning in the state legislatures.
We know what that takes. There's an old saying that all politics is local. That's especially true with state politics. So I would ask and beg of each of you in here, if you don't already know your state representative, your state senator, please get to know them. This is kind of like insurance. We can't wait till the house is on fire to buy the insurance. We need to know them ahead of time. They need to know who you are. They need to know where your operations are. They need to know why those operations matter to the local communities. So please build those relationships. Let them know we are investing in ideas for and tracking digital tracking tools. Things happen fast at the state levels.
We need to know when these bills are introduced. We need to know when they move. We need to know when they've been amended because we may read one version and think we're fine. May get an amendment it to would include ice cream or a protein bar. We are watching those constantly. We need we need to be on top of the things in the States we're doing. We're doing our best to work across the entire dairy supply chain, which means our dairy farmers, our state processor organizations, all of their allied organizations, our retail organizations. We need the entire value chain focused on how do we win in these state legislatures. We need to avoid a patchwork of varying state regulations.
We're doing what we can to empower everyone to engage in advocating and influencing policy. We need everyone. We need the executive suite. We need to enter. We need everyone involved in this. We're doing this by how we're seeing fly ins and fly outs flying in Washington. We fly out to the congressional districts, to the states. We're doing those. We've got grassroots action tools that we provide. So you can send messages to your elected officials. We're investing in toolkits so that we have more data for you. One is we have is dairy delivery. So when you talk to an elected official, you can talk about the economic impact in the to the state, to that elected official. You talk about the jobs we have.
Another thing we do in December of every year is we recognize and honor those political champions that have been there for us. We have a Celebration of Dairy. We invite members of Congress administration to staff, and we usually award 4 or 5 different individuals who've done outstanding things for us. And it's a great evening of enjoying all kinds of delicious dairy products. So this morning I have gone through with you. I've shared with you my view on five strategies to win for dairy. First one is we got to win on health. We have a great story to tell. We have a competitive advantage. We need to use it. Winning with growth. We're seeing the tremendous growth, the efficiency of our industry.
We're seeing the investment that the farm investment to processing facility. We need to grow, expand new markets, the value of technology, the adoption of AI across our industry, adoption, more use of technology, increased efficiency and increased innovation. As I said earlier, we have a tremendous product and dairy, and we have tremendous ingredients in the various proteins that enzymes and bioactives inside there.
And with all the investment we have, we have innovative ways of identifying those, packaging those, and delivering those to consumers. And our most important asset is our people. We need to make sure we continue to focus on our people. How do we attract and retain the highest and the brightest, and how do we give back to the local communities to sustain us? And we know when we speak with one voice, we command attention. We can make a difference. How do we band together and advocate for policy that supports our industry, ensures a future? I know we operate in very uncertain, volatile times, but all of us in food and agriculture, we've seen this before. And there's one thing that never changes.
And that's the resilience of this amazing dairy industry never changes. We know that we have governments and other detractors that are constantly making changes, disrupting our markets, rewriting the rules. And we in this industry have a responsibility to engage, to help shape the future of this industry for the next generations. Leadership rises at times like this. Where does it rise from? It rises from the farmers, rises from the processors, rises from suppliers. It rises from all of you. This is our opportunity. I firmly believe that our best days are ahead of us. Because I know the commitment, the passion, the integrity that is that resides inside this industry. We heard that with the award winners, we hear it everywhere we go.
We all know that we've been in this industry absolutely phenomenal. So I'd ask you, as you leave Dairy Forum 2026, I'd ask you to join me in a commitment to being united to win for dairy. Thank you very much.