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Minnesota Milk to focus more on policy issues

Minnesota’s dairy farmer advocacy group has made some changes that will help them focus more on policy issues.  Minnesota Milk Executive Director Lucas Sjostrom tells Brownfield the change affects many behind-the-scenes tasks. “A bunch of great staff at Midwest Dairy was doing a lot of the things that the great staff at Edge are going to do, and so that’s our accounting, that’s our filings with the state, that’s our human resources through hiring, and our information technology or I-T department.”

Sjostrom says moving the administrative and program services from the checkoff folks at Midwest Dairy to Edge Dairy Farmers Cooperative makes sense for their members. “We want to be more focused on policy, especially in St. Paul, especially our state policy more of the time, so as we were going forward with that, it just made more sense I think to align with a policy organization.”

Sjostrom says the board believes there are plenty of on-farm production and education resources through partners like the University of Minnesota, so Minnesota Milk is not going to duplicate those efforts.

As of Tuesday, Sjostrom’s duties changed a little. “I become an employee of Edge and will help them with some things with a small portion of my time, but I still will continue as Minnesota Milk Executive Director for the vast majority of my time and kind of play quarterback in Minnesota for all of those activities.”

Midwest Dairy Association will continue performing its Minnesota dairy checkoff activities.