Exports, food programs impacting U.S. dairy industry

MADISON, Wis. — The future is bright for the U.S. dairy industry for several reasons, including the opportunity for dairy exports.

“I think dairy is having a moment because we have so many exciting things happening,” said Brooke Rollins, U.S. secretary of agriculture.

“Trade has been at the top of our priority list,” she said during a fireside chat at World Dairy Expo. “I was in the first Donald Trump administration running his domestic policy team, and when the administration changed, we walked out with an $8 billion agricultural trade surplus and dairy was definitely part of that.”

Four years later, the situation was quite different.

“That surplus had turned into a $51 billion agricultural trade deficit,” Rollins said. “That tells you how quickly things can turn, based on priorities and focuses of different administrations.”

In just over a year, she said, 20 new trade deals and frameworks have been achieved by the Trump administration.

“This is unprecedented in this short period of time and every one of those deals contain wins for our American dairy producers,” she said.

Dairy exports last year totaled $9.5 billion.

“That was the second highest ever on record, and we are expecting 12% more this year than last year,” Rollins said. “Butter exports are up 48%, and exports to East Asia and the Middle East have more than doubled.”

The agriculture secretary highlighted several trade deals including Malaysia that will eliminate or reduce tariffs on U.S. dairy and recognize U.S. food safety systems.

“Indonesia will remove 99% of tariffs on American exports, including all of dairy,” Rollins said.

“Costa Rica is streamlining their dairy access to open up millions of dollars of opportunity for our dairy products,” she said. “Other key partners have opened up new market opportunities for U.S. dairy including Ecuador, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Taiwan, Argentina and the European Union.”

During 2025, Rollins said, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued more than 63,000 U.S. export certificates for about 130 countries to facilitate dairy trade.

As the secretary of agriculture, Rollins is responsible for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

“Up until we walked in the door last February, the largest purchases using taxpayer dollars in SNAP were for junk food and soda,” she said.

“There are families who desperately need this help, so I would never advocate for not having these programs,” Rollins said.

“But when you have 43 million people in America on food stamps and they are getting a pretty good benefit from the federal government thanks to American taxpayers and the largest purchase with those dollars was soda,” she said. “That tells you so much.”

Therefore, there is a need to recalibrate the entire approach of benefit programs, the agriculture secretary said.

“Instead of being way down the list, we are putting our farmers and ranchers at the top of the list,” Rollins said.

“We are now requiring retailers to stock 28 healthy items on their shelves, instead of just 11,” she said. “That means people will now purchase more cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt and milk.”

Throughout the school year, USDA provides 30 million school lunches and 15 million school breakfasts every day.

“The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act is bringing whole milk back to school cafeterias for the first time in over a decade and restoring critical opportunities that have been unfairly stripped away from our dairy farmers,” Rollins said.

“A lot of these school districts don’t have ovens in their kitchens anymore because they were just heating the lunches up every day,” the agriculture secretary said.

“USDA is providing money to put equipment back into school kitchens to get more healthy foods back on school plates,” she said. Health and Human Services Secretary “Bobby Kennedy is doing the same thing with hospitals and the secretary of war is doing the same thing to feed our military.”

Dairy farmers are also supported through the Dairy Margin Coverage Program, and enrollment for 2027 opened on Oct. 5.

“Over 13,500 dairy farmers have taken advantage of this program, with total payments exceeding $98 million nationwide,” Rollins said.

As part of the Working Families Tax Cuts Act, the DMC has been reauthorized through 2031.

“And this act made an additional 1 million pounds of milk eligible for Tier 1 coverage at a 25% reduced premium cost,” Rollins said.

In regard to animal health, the agriculture secretary said, the outbreak of the New World screwworm is under control.

“Today we have two active cases in Texas and one in New Mexico,” Rollins said. “And we are going to beat it very quickly.”

“In 1972, the state of Texas had 90,000 cases of New World screwworm and it was the land-grant university researchers and USDA research team in the 1950s and ‘60s that figured out that the sterile fly is the only way to beat the New World screwworm,” she said.