Join the 2023 NEAFA Annual Meeting, taking place February 7th and 8th in Albany, NY
Charlie Elrod, Ph.D., President & CEO, Natural Biologics, Inc. and NEAFA Board Member
Plan now to attend the 2023 NEAFA Annual Meeting, to be held in Albany NY on February 7 and 8. This marks a return to Albany since our last meeting there in 2020 and a unique collaboration with the Northeast Dairy Producers Association (NEDPA). The theme of this year’s meeting is “Tackling Today’s Disruptions” and will address several strategies to make all of our businesses more resilient in the future.
The afternoon of the 7th will be a joint meeting with NEDPA members, kicking off with a discussion of today’s dairy economy followed by some of the challenges and opportunities faced by dairy producers. Such topics as labor challenges, policy and legislative initiatives and broader macroeconomic trends will be explored. Also in collaboration with NEDPA, we will then move into a Transportation Summit and drill down into this critical aspect of our industry. Driver availability, training and licensing will be followed by discussions of the bottlenecks present in our industry whether we’re hauling milk, commodities or finished feed. With insight from leaders of farms, processors, government and feedmills, we’ll discuss the challenges and potential solutions to preventing our industry being derailed by transportation issues.
On Wednesday, in addition to our usual business meeting and election of officers, we’ll hear again from Dr. Chris Wolf on the economic issues we are all facing in our lives and businesses. The ever-popular producer panel will be facilitated by Eileen Jensen of the NY Animal Agriculture Alliance discussing various ways that dairy producers engage with social media to proactively portray their operations. This is an increasingly important role that we can all play to offset many of the misleading and negative stereotypes of the dairy industry as antibiotic- and animal-abusing, water- and air-polluting factory farms.
Lastly, we’ll wrap up with the Annual Awards Lunch in which we’ll recognize the tremendous contributions of the awardee of our Distinguished Service Award and our retiring board members. Todd Thurman will be our keynote speaker and share with us his perspective on China’s Future and the Impact on American Agriculture. For more information, click here. Registration is also open, and you can sign up now by clicking here. We look forward to seeing you in Albany!