Objectives

STATEMENT  OF  GOALS 
The New York Center for Dairy Excellence is focusing its efforts on facilitating programs that can assist dairy farmers in meeting the growing and diverse needs for dairy products in the Northeast. While individual farms may differ in their approaches to addressing this industry challenge, it is important that it be met in a cost-efficient and environmentally sound manner. The NYCDE seeks to develop and support programs that contribute to the following overarching goals for New York dairy farms: 

  • Maintain long-term return on investment 
          §  Return on assets > 8% calculated as a 3-year rolling average 
          §  Return on equity > 8% calculated as a 3-year rolling average 
  • Increase total milk production of individual dairy farms by 10% during the next five years through
    • Increased milk production per cow
    • Increased cow numbers, or
    • A combination of the two

Due to numerous factors external to the dairy farm – such as milk price, impacts of weather, commodity feed prices, etc. – which have large effects on return on investment on a year to year basis, the NYCDE also has established the following contributing goals for profitability as each is well-correlated to overall farm profitability: 

 

  • Maintain dairy farm Internal Herd Growth rates > 5% annually
  • Maintain $2,500 per cow per year net milk income over purchased feed cost.

While advancing farm profitability and production growth, the NYCDE will support further adoption or improvement of environmental practices on farms of all sizes, including new manure management technologies.  
 
The NYCDE will promote collaboration among all segments of the industry and the coordination of resources to more efficiently deliver tools and programs to producers to achieve these goals. Additionally, it will develop and deliver consistent messages to government officials and the general public on the importance and impact of dairy farming on New York State’s economy.

 

The New York Dairy Industry Task Force adopted the following Statement of Goals in July 2008.