April 2013

Dairy farm familiesof the Southeast

Dairy Promotion News

The SUDIA board re-elected four officers and seated two new board

members during the 42nd Annual Meet-ing held March 13 and 14 at the Atlanta Hilton Airport Hotel.

The leadership elected the following individuals at the Annual Meeting:• President – Glen Easter, Laurens, S.C.• Vice President – Zach Myers, Jones-

ville, N.C.• Secretary – Jerry Truelove, Clermont,

Ga.• Treasurer – Ken Smith, Remington,

Va.In addition, two new members were

seated on the SUDIA Board of Directors. The new board members are Max Ander-son of Decatur, Miss., and Steve Lee of Madisonville, Tenn.

Producers at the Annual Meeting re-

ceived training on the use of social media and heard from Tom Gallagher, CEO of Dairy Management Inc., and U.S. Olym-pic bronze medalist Amanda Weir, who is an advocate for refueling with flavored milk after exercise.

During his speech, Gallagher addressed increasing sales of fluid milk through strategic partnerships and product in-novation.

“I believe the fluid milk market pro-vides a phenomenal opportunity for growth,” he said.

SUDIA’s annual meeting is an impor-tant event each year that provides a time to review the organization’s past success-es, honor retiring board members and seat new members to serve as directors of the SUDIA board.

New 2013 SUDIA officers elected during 42nd Annual Meeting held in Atlanta

“Healthy students are better students.” That’s the bottom line in the report

released recently by the GenYOUth Foun-dation, a public-private partner-ship between the National Dairy Council (NDC) and the National Football League (NFL) that created the Fuel Up to Play 60 program.

The research, named the Well-ness Impact, shows how much better children learn and perform in school when they have proper nutrition and physical activity. Some recent studies demonstrate through brain-imaging technology that the quality of food that children eat and the level of physical activity they participate in vastly improve brain function.

According to the Wellness Impact report, children who eat breakfast

• Are better able to learn;• Achieve higher tests scores;• Miss fewer days of school; and• Behave better in school.Since youth spend the bulk of their time

in school, it’s a natural place to emphasize proper nutrition and physical activity. The Fuel Up to Play 60 program has already made great strides in this area, emphasizing the benefits of participating in 60 minutes of physical activity and consuming nutrient-rich foods, including dairy, whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

Likewise, breakfast programs that include milk, yogurt or other dairy foods, are an ideal and cost-effective way to make sure children are getting the protein and nutri-ents they need to start their school days.

To learn more about how to get breakfast and FUTP60 programs in your area schools, contact Molly Szymanski at 1-800-343-4693 or by email at mszymanski@sedairy.org.

The 2013 SUDIA board officers: (LEFT to RIGHT) Secretary Jerry Truelove of Georgia, Treasurer Ken Smith of Virginia, President Glen Easter of South Carolina and Vice President Zach Myers of North Carolina.

Breakfast programs in schools increase milk consumption by 1.2 million poundsMore milk is getting into the hands

of children across the Southeast with the help of efforts by SUDIA staff to expand breakfast programs in schools.

According to a recent Food Research and Action Center report, the total number of breakfasts served in the 2010-11 school year in the Southeast grew from 2.68 mil-lion to more than 2.82 million, marking a 6 percent increase. That translates into an estimated 1.2 million pounds of additional milk sold during the 2011-12 school year.

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Annual Meeting continued on page 2

Southeast schools increased milk consumption during breakfast by over 1.2 million pounds during 2012.

Children who exercise and eat breakfast that includes dairy, perform better

According to the Wellness

Impact report, children who eat breakfast behave better in school and

achieve higher test scores.

DAIRY Promotion News

Some of the highlights from this year’s meeting included:• Breakfast programs in schools across the Southeast

expanded in 2012 with 1,300 new school breakfast programs started last year.

• More schools participated in the Coolers for Coaches program with a total of 353 coolers with milk placed in schools for students and athletes to drink after exercise.

• Fuel Up to Play 60 continued to gain momentum with partners donating more than $67,000 to Southeast schools for dairy programs. To date, more than 75 percent of stu-dents in the Southeast participate in FUTP60 programs, reaching nearly 7 million youth.

• SUDIA’s dietitians worked diligently through 2012 to educate the public and the healthcare community about the benefits of dairy, including ways to incorpo-rate flavored milk and dairy foods into the diets of those who are lactose intolerant. SUDIA staff members gave 174 media interviews, reach-ing 8.3 million consumers

• The Dedicated to Dairy program made great strides in 2012 and has now extend-ed into the retail environment with a pilot point of sales piece promoting Southeast dairy farmers in 166 super-

markets in Georgia, reaching 3.8 million consumers.• SUDIA continued to utilize its spokesperson networks, in-

cluding the Dairy Farmer Spokesperson Network that has been expanded to more than 60 dairy farmers who participated in over 40 interviews in 2012.

• The dairy checkoff continued to work with national part-ners, such as McDonald’s, Quaker, Domino’s Pizza and others, to increase the sales of dairy through innovative dairy menu items.

For more information, contact Eric McClain at 1-800-928-6455 or emcclain@sedairy.org

U.S. Olympic medalist Amanda Weir was guest speaker during SUDIA’s 2013 Annual Meeting. Weir spoke about the important role chocolate milk plays as a recovery beverage during her training as a swimmer.

In addition to promoting milk consumption with traditional breakfasts in schools, SUDIA also encourages expanded break-fast programs where students can take breakfast into their class-rooms or Grab n’ Go breakfast meals that include milk, cheese and yogurt.

“SUDIA staff work hard to promote milk as part of school nutrition programs through efforts with school staff, one-on-one meetings, presentations at conferences and by offering Dairy Everywhere grants,” said Molly Szymanski, director of school programs with SUDIA.

SUDIA will continue to promote the benefits of including dairy with breakfast by setting up “Breakfast Solution Station” displays at school nutrition conferences across the Southeast.

For more information on breakfast programs in your local schools, contact Molly Szymanski at 800-343-4693 or by email at mszymanski@sedairy.org.

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Annual Meeting continued from page 1

Former NFL player and SUDIA MVP member Artose Pinner visits schools throughout the Southeast and speaks with students about the importance of exercise and eating healthy meals that include dairy.

With the relaunch of the Dedicated

to Dairy program in November, more con-sumers than ever are learning how South-east dairy farmers are dedicated to their cows, their milk and their land.

More than 63 dairy farm families across the Southeast have participated in the Dedicated to Dairy program, telling their stories by video

of dairy life to the public. Since the relaunch, traffic to the redesigned website - found at www.dedicatedto-dairy.com and housed under SUDIA’s main website, www.southeastdairy.org - has increased by 300 percent. Likewise, the number of people who were fans of Dedicated to Dairy on social media sites, such as Face-book and Twitter, jumped more than 360 percent dur-ing November.

Dedicated to Dairy program gaining national attention

Since the Dedi-cated to Dairy

programs online relaunch in No-

vember, the pro-gram has reached

over 1 million consumers.

Georgia dairy farmer Eldon Eberly and his family filmed a Dedicated to Dairy video in 2011.

Amanda Weir poses with her most recent Olympic medal from 2012’s London Olympics.

Dedicated to dairy continued on page 4

DAIRY Promotion News

3

Consumers across the country joined in a new type of conversation.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day and in recognition of American Heart Month, dietitians with SUDIA and Quaker Oats

teamed up on Feb. 12 to host a live “chat” on the so-cial media site Twit-ter. During this Tweet chat, consum-ers and healthcare profes-sionals shared ques-tions and learned more about the

benefits of milk, cheese, yogurt and oats to heart health.

Committed to driving the sales of fluid milk, Quaker and Dairy Manage-ment Inc. (DMI), dairy farmers’ national checkoff organization, have joined forces

to encourage consumers to use milk or other dairy products when cooking with Quaker products.

More than 6.8 million consumers viewed the Tweet chat throughout the one-hour event, which was mentioned on Twitter more than 2,200 times. At certain points, the Tweet chat was among the highest-trending conversa-tions nationwide. Even the national retailer Macy’s took notice of the online conversation and promoted its own Heart Health campaign to SUDIA’s on-line audience.

The live Tweet chat is just one of the many ways that the partnership between

Quaker Oats and DMI has worked to educate and encourage consumers to make oatmeal with milk instead of water and use dairy when cooking with Quaker products.

“To reach over 6 million consumers in one hour for free is unbelievable,” said Mary Martin Nordness, director of nutri-tion affairs with SUDIA. “The success of this Twitter chat with Quaker Oats proves how strong social media is and how effective it is in reaching consumers in a cost-effective way.”

For more information, contact Aman-da Trice at atrice@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

SUDIA gains national attention: online chat partnership with Quaker Oats reaches over 6.8 million consumers in one hour

About 350 aspiring chefs gave it their best shot, but it came down to just

one.Together with Domino’s Pizza and the

Carolina Panthers, SUDIA sponsored the Sir Purr-fect Pizza Contest as part of the Fuel Up to Play 60 (FUTP60) program in an effort to encourage students to use dairy products to create a unique, tasty – and healthy – pizza.

“This contest was an ideal way to in-crease consumption of cheese and other dairy products because, in the short-term, students would not only experi-ment using different cheese combina-tions, but they would ask their friends and families to sample their recipes,” said Bob Trombino, director of market-ing and processor relations with SUDIA.

The contest has long-term benefits too.In addition to creating a pizza topping

combination, students also wrote a brief essay describing how their pizza topping combination would be a healthy way to

enjoy one of their favorite foods.This year’s first-place winner was Au-

tumn Mitchell, an eighth-grade student from Fort Mill Middle School in Fort Mill, S.C. Autumn’s recipe, “The Panther Player’s Prized Pizza,” relies heavily on different kinds of cheese, as well as fresh

vegetables, such as spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms.

“(This) is a healthy (pizza) that is scrumptious and it can supply you with energy to go out there and play for 60 minutes or more a day,” Autumn wrote.

As the first-place winner, Autumn received a $200 gift card donated by the NFL to NFLShop.com, autographed Carolina Panthers memorabilia and a Sir Purr Domino’s Pizza Party.

Fort Mill Middle School also received a $4,000 grant from SUDIA to be used for expanding its FUTP60 program and a pep rally was held at the school with players from the Carolina Panthers.

For more about FUTP60 and its part-nerships with the NFL, please contact Molly Szymanski at 1-800-343-4693 or by email at mszymanski@sedairy.org.

School pizza topping contest teaches students to eat healthy, educates them about the importance of dairy foods in a daily diet

“To reach over 6 million consum-ers in one hour for free is unbe-lievable! Social media proves to

be effective in reaching consum-ers in a cost-effec-

tive way.”

Mary Martin Nordness,Director of Nutrition

AffairsSUDIA

Dedicated to Dairy program gaining national attention

SUDIA partnered with Quaker Oats this past February to host a live “chat” on the social media site Twitter. The “chat” was a success, reaching over 6.8 million consumers with dairy messaging in one hour.

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Southeast United Dairy Industry Association, Inc.5340 West Fayetteville RoadAtlanta, GA 30349-5416

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www.southeastdairy.org

www.facebook.com/sedairy

www.twitter.com/sedairy

www.youtube.com/southeastdairyinc

www.dairydelivers.wordpress.com

Visit Us ONLINE.Reaching the public this

way is becoming increas-ingly important with the number of consumers who rely on their comput-ers and smartphones for information, communicat-ing and even paying bills and shopping. According to recent surveys, 70 per-cent of American consum-ers make online purchases and 1 in 4 people check their smartphones every 30 minutes. The world’s largest retailers are even shifting their marketing efforts to target consumers through social media, which not only reaches them where they spend time every day, but is also free.

Consequently, SUDIA has publicized Dedicated to Dairy and farm families through both online and traditional media.

As a result, more than 20 stories about Dedicated to Dairy families were published in local newspapers and other sources throughout the nine states SUDIA covers. In addition, national publications such as Hoard’s Dairyman and Progressive Dairyman published stories about the Dedicated to Dairy

program.Each farm family profiled for Dedi-

cated to Dairy has its own family page complete with a video addressing spe-cific topics related to farm operations, an article about the farm, family recipes and family photos.

“Surveys consistently show that the public trusts dairy farmers, so it is exciting to see the Dedicated to Dairy program grow and reach more consum-ers in a variety of ways,” said Amanda Trice, director of communications and public relations with SUDIA.

For more information contact Aman-da Trice at atrice@sedairy.org or 1-800-343-4693.

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Louisiana dairy farmer Jerry Simpson and his family recorded a Dedicated to Dairy video to help educate consumers about where their dairy foods come from.