Dairy farmer lawsuit prompts USDA Secretary to end checkoff ESG spending
Wisconsin dairy farmer Abby Swan filed suit in June against the Dairy Checkoff, saying that the organization is violating her First Amendment rights by spending her checkoff dollars on issues and language she doesn’t support.
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced recently that the dairy checkoff should no longer spend checkoff funds on environmental, social and governance or ESG projects.
Swan, who operates a 300-head dairy with her brother, said the farm spends about $13,000 to $15,000 per year in mandatory checkoff taxes.
A trained registered nurse, Swan grew up on the family farm, spent more than a decade working in the emergency room, has been working on the family farm for about 12 years full time. Her brother handles the farming and feeding and Swan handles the cattle management, breeding, calving and milking when needed.
WHY THE LAWSUIT?
Swan said she filed the lawsuit because she didn’t have a say in how her checkoff dollars were being spent.
“After we got the letter asking for all of the sustainability data, I started doing more research and found out our checkoff dollars were pushing net zero strategies.
“I reached out to Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, they told me it’s my first amendment right to not have to financially support something I don’t agree with,” she said.
In January, Swan received a call from a data collection company asking for “sustainability data.” She was not comfortable sharing business information, and she called her milk processor who had supposedly asked for the data. She was told that although the information was voluntary, she “needed” to give the information, such as energy usage, (diesel, propane, natural gas, electricity), herd data, nutrition data, number of cows, heifers, etc.
As soon as the family agreed to comply, Swan said the company wanted even more information. Soon they received a letter saying their manure storage was increasing greenhouse gas emissions. She was livid. “I said, that’s regulated by the federal government and the state government. We’re mandated to store manure in a pit, and you’re telling me that to be greenhouse gas compliant, we need get rid of it?”
Swan said the National Milk Producers Federation, a national lobbying group, had been signing up processors in a sustainability program. “They all had to sign up for the program. They say it was voluntary, but it’s not. It was not voluntary. At what point was my milk processor going to say, ‘well you didn’t provide sustainability data, so Nestle or Danone or all these foreign companies won’t take my milk anymore,” she said.
DAIRY INDUSTRY STRUGGLING
“We’re down to like 20,000 dairy farmers and they are blaming us for climate change. There are how many other industries and farms in the world. We are told we are responsible for climate change and our checkoff dollars are being spent to promote sustainability. It makes me mad. They are telling the general public, dairy farmers are creating climate change, and meanwhile you have small dairies going out of business and they are promoting huge 20,000 head dairies. You are selling out small farms by saying they can’t be sustainable, but big farms can? What is the purpose? Is there a grand plan to get rid of all dairies, and then go after all of ag?
“Did nobody learn from Covid?”
Swan said, “I say to people, define sustainability to me. It used to mean that you could survive and your business could be financially sound. With $16 milk and futures are saying $15 milk, how many small dairy farms will survive?”
In addition to Rollins’ announcement that no further checkoff dollars should be spent on environmental, social and governance projects, Swan believes more needs to be done to return the dairy checkoff to it’s original intent.
HER WISH LIST
- “The Dairy Innovation Center needs to be dissolved.” The Innovation Center is a checkoff-funded forum engaging more than 500 companies from across the U.S. dairy industry. The website explains that the Innovation Center “aligns on shared priorities and drives collective progress for people, animals and the planet.”
- “I want the Innovation Center CEO fired.”
- “I want the whole board to be removed.”
USDA’S TAKE
USDA’s letter to the National Dairy Board Chair reported that USDA considers the following DMI initiatives as supporting ESG activities: the mandatory participation in Scope 3 GHG accounting by dairy producers; U.S. Dairy Materiality Assessment; U.S. Dairy Net Zero Initiative; Pathways to Dairy Net Zero; Greener Cattle Initiative; Sustainability Alliance; U.S. Dairy Stewardship Commitment; the mandatory participation in the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management Environmental Stewardship by dairy producers, and 2050 environmental stewardship goals insofar as it relates to ESG commitments, greenhouse-gas intensity reduction campaigns, and any solicitation of ESG commitments. Other initiatives may also be misaligned with departmental policy.
A USDA memo to chief executive officers, chairs, and members of research and promotion boards directed them that “all assessments should not underwrite environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks, net-zero, or climate-neutrality initiatives that impose non-statutory costs, restrictions, or commitments on domestic producers or processors.”
