During the North American International Livestock Exposition (NAILE) held in Louisville, Kentucky, I had the opportunity to speak with Haley Fisher, a Mobile Classroom Dairy Instructor with Southland Dairy Famers. Southland is a dairy checkoff program for dairy farmers specifically in Kentucky. “We are fully funded by checkoff dollars that they give us to go promote and market their products,” Fisher explained.
Her role as a Mobile Instructor is to go to events such as NAILE, the state fair, and schools throughout the state to share the dairy industry story. Mobile means exactly that, it’s a mobile dairy farm. “We take a live cow, we milk them on-site for students to see firsthand, and give them a little bit of insight into what our dairy farmers do,” she said.
The topics vary from the production side of things, what the farmers’ day-to-day looks like, and the environmental science aspect of farming. The topics can change depending on the crowd age because she’s teaching students from preschool all the way to senior year of high school.
Even though she may be speaking with kids of all ages, she still gets people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Those ideas aren’t only coming from the students, but parents also. “You’ll have like 50-year-old women who are like, “why is that milk not chocolate?” you don’t understand how much of the population truly believes that,” she said.
Fisher mentioned how it’s becoming more difficult to educate in Kentucky as more and more farmers are stepping out of the industry, which adds to more students not being involved in agriculture. “We have decreased by over 140 dairy farms in the last two years, but we still have around dairies statewide,” she said. For the most part, the majority of her students still have some ties to at least one farmer.
As for what the dairy industry is doing in her state at the moment, she explained that the value-added aspect is becoming very popular. “We have started noticing that several of our dairy farmers have started to look into actually processing their own milk, whether it be for household use items, milk, cheese, yogurt, ice cream,” she said. “We have several that have gone into that niche market.”
To hear the full interview with Haley Fisher, you can head to our agriculture podcast page.
