Dairy Advocacy and Resource Team (DART)
Agri-business involvement is the next Step in growing PA’s dairy industry!
Agri-business professionals can become an even greater resource to the producers they work with regularly by participating in the Center’s Dairy Advocacy and Resource Team. Industry meetings are held quarterly in six regions of the state to provide agri-business professionals an opportunity to network with others in the industry and to gain resources and skills to help the producers they serve through their professions improve on-farm profits and productivity.
October meetings showcase dairy processing and retail
Those who participated in the October round of Dairy Advocacy and Resource Team meetings learned more about the Dairy Animal Care and Quality Assurance program and received insight on a 2009 dairy market and price outlook. They also had the opportunity to tour one of five dairy processing plants that hosted the meetings.
To view the presentations, click on the links below:
Dairy Animal Care and Quality Assurance
Dairy Market and Milk Price Outlook
The plants hosting the DART meetings included:
-- Turkey Hill Dairy, Conestoga, which has the #2 brand of refrigerated ice tea and #5 brand of ice cream in the country. The Dairy serves 8,000 customers, mostly supermarkets and convenience stores, in 15 states up and down the East Coast.
-- Schneiders Dairy in Williamsport, one of five locations for the family-owned business which is listed in the top 100 dairies in the U.S.
-- Dairy Farmers of America's Mechanicsburg plant, which is the largest manufacturer of Starbuck's Frapuccino, a product made with 50 percent milk, in the country.
-- Sheetz Corporate Headquarters in Altoona, which includes a new bakery to serve the 350 convenience stores that are part of the family-owned company which is one of the fastest growing conevenience store businesses in the country.
-- Dean Foods of Sharpsville, the largest product capacity facility among all forty Dean Corporate locations in the United States. Plant capacity is an astounding 300,000 gallons per day.
For more information about the recent DART meetings, contact Cerrita Reed at 717-346-0849 or c-creed@state.pa.us.