American Dairy Coalition (ADC), a grassroots dairy farmer-led organization, has been engaging farmers and industry in discussion of the future of milk pricing since 2020.

In 2016, dairymen and women were among the agricultural coalition that helped flip traditionally blue states red – places like Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio – during Donald Trump’s journey to the White House.

Mexico imports nearly a quarter of the U.S. dairy industry’s exports annually. It’s a critical $1.4 billion marketplace. And it’s one that President Trump continues to risk damaging permanently – and unnecessarily.

At a time when thousands of U.S. dairy operators of all sizes are starved for revenue, declaring bankruptcy or selling off multi-generational operations, the latest inequity is a particularly cruel twist of the knife.

Recently, a new immigration bill (HR 7059 Border Wall Funding and Immigration) has been introduced in the House of Representatives, which could significantly increase immigration enforcement efforts on unauthorized workers across the U.S.

As a dairy farmer, you know the hard work that goes into making that gallon of milk in the grocery store dairy case. Wholesome and nutritious, that gallon of milk represents the culmination of generations of hard work expanding and growing the family business. Milk is what your life revolves around: milking the cows, working the fields, caring for the animals. So, as members of the dairy industry, we take that word “milk” seriously.

It is no secret that humans are emotional beings. We naturally are moved by sensational content that pulls at our heart strings or scares us into action. This is the template that animal and environmental activist groups have been using to captivate audiences for years, and they are successfully swaying public perception through emotionally charged material and skewed data.

Recently, the AG Act – a guest worker visa program that could provide much-needed labor relief for our industry – was added to the Securing America’s Future Act (SAFA). Thanks to the voices of farmers across the nation, Capitol Hill is beginning to understand that the dairy industry needs a viable work force. However, more support is needed to ensure the AG Act remains included in SAFA.

More than 208,000 jobs could disappear if we were to eliminate the immigrant work force in the dairy industry. These hard-working folks are performing jobs that, year after year, go unfilled by our domestic workforce.

Farmers across the nation are in dire need of a reliable visa program that provides timely access to a long-term workforce to fill jobs domestic workers continually pass up. Current visa programs do not provide dairy producers with year-round labor and are riddled with complexities and bureaucratic red tape that remain troublesome to even seasonal labor needs.