Christina Zuiderveen: Speaker Interview Series

On this special episode of Let’s Chat Dairy, Betty Berning welcomes Christina Zuiderveen of Black Soil Dairy, and featured speaker at HighGround Dairy’s third annual Global Dairy Outlook Conference this June. The podcast can be found here, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe so that you never miss an episode!

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Transcript:

(0:15) Betty Berning:
Hello everyone, welcome to a special Let’s Chat Dairy podcast. This is Betty Berning, HighGround’s Contributing Dairy Economist, and today I am interviewing Christina Zuiderveen, Managing Partner at Black Soil Dairy, who will be one of our speakers at the Outlook Conference in June. Christina will be on our Producer Panel. We are so excited to have her. As a reminder, our Outlook Conference is June 18th to 20th in Chicago. Registration is open, so if you haven’t signed up yet, go to the website and get yourself signed up. It’s going to be a great conference.

With that, hi, Christina, we’re so happy to have you on today. How about you start out by telling our listeners just a little bit about yourself, your family, and your farm?

(1:17) Christina Zuiderveen:
Sure. Well, Betty, it’s good to check in with you again. So just a little information about myself. I currently live in northwest Iowa with my husband and three kids who are 8, 10, and 11, but I was actually born into a dairy family in the Central Valley in California. My dad moved us to Michigan in 1996 when competition, regulation, and market downturn pushed a wave of California dairymen to seek greener pastures. They ended up in the southwest, in Idaho, and a bunch in the Michigan-Indiana area of the Midwest. (1:53) At 15, I was quite sure that I wanted nothing to do with the dairy industry. I was going to move somewhere warmer than Michigan. Just so you know, Iowa is not warmer than Michigan. But at 20, I had a change of heart and agreed to a blind date set up by our CMEX sales rep and it wasn’t long before I did agree to become a dairy wife.

(2:16) Betty:
Oh my goodness. I love this story. Every time I hear it, I smile. You got to love like teenage dreams. I think I also thought I’m never going to work in dairy. I’m going to do something different. And yet here I am. So totally love it. Okay. So I know you through your very lovely sister, Serena. You both have a couple of sisters. I have a couple of sisters, strangely enough. Serena has met one of mine now too. That’s how you and I were able to connect. And you were so gracious before I was with HighGround, willing to speak at one of my University of Minnesota extension classes. Because I was in Pipestone, Minnesota, and you were in Iowa, not too far away.

But how in the world did you wind up in Iowa, from California to Michigan, and then to Iowa? How did this happen?

(3:06) Christina:
So I married my dairyman, and he actually loves construction almost as much as he loves dairy. So in 2012, my dad had purchased a dairy owned by the bank in Northwest Iowa and told us we could go check it out and fix it up and flip it or stay there. The Central Plains is the region that we’re in here. And it has showed a tremendous amount of potential for growth. And we had really fallen in love with our community here. So we chose to stick around and operate the dairy. Not long after that, my brother took the similar opportunity and he chose to purchase land and start a dairy in Southeast South Dakota, which is just about 40 minutes from us. And we now have two parlors there and work quite closely together and milk about 15,000 cows and have 100 employees.

My role on the dairy has changed a little bit over the last 10 years. When my kids were small and our operation was also smaller, I did some of the accounts payable, payroll and some HR. And now that our operation has grown, I have given up the AP, but stayed involved on the financial side of the business. I also spend a fair amount of time on HR, including trying to get some TN employees because labor is always a challenge, as well as kind of making sure that all our managers at all our locations are on the same page. So annually, I will run a meeting where we talk about our labor goals, anything new that has come up politically, and just where we want to go and how we want to stay committed to having a quality labor force.

(4:51) Betty:
You sound like you are very busy, like most people on a farm and certainly like I think most moms feel to trying to just wear a lot of hats.

One thing that really impressed me, this was before I met you, but your sister was busy bragging about you in the best possible way and was like, my sister is testifying before the Senate on FMMOs. And this was before the hearings, which you also spoke at the hearings this past summer. Can you give me just maybe some of your thoughts around future FMMO or even just your impressions of this process? Because I really didn’t know much about it before it began. And man, oh man, is it long.

(5:31) Christina:
Yeah, so that’s another thing that has kind of changed in my role on the dairy. I’ve really enjoyed since my kids are older and a little bit more independent that I have been able to get involved on some boards, some state and federal politics, and some speaking engagements like this one. Regarding the FMMO, it has been really fun to do that initial testimony kind of calling for analysis and change in milk pricing formulas. You’re right, it has taken a long time. It was exactly two years to the day from when I testified before the subcommittee to when I testified before the USDA hearing. And that process went on months longer than they expected.

But I am really glad that this discussion has been taken seriously and they have taken opinions and suggestions from all the involved parties, the producers, the processors, some of the groups involved like NMPF and Farm Bureau. By taking the time for that, I’m very hopeful that we can come up with a comprehensive plan that fairly pays farmers. And one of the things I’d really love to see is still encouraging growth and investment within the processing side.

(6:46) Betty:
That all makes sense. And you said it so well, they’re just trying to find a solution that works across the supply chain that encourages growth in the dairy industry and also allows for compensation in a way that makes sense. So love that answer. I think you’re the first one we’re having speak at our conference from the I-29 corridor, fun fact. So you will be repping.

What do you think are the biggest challenges though in that region? That region is growing so rapidly when we look at cow numbers and milk production. It seems like it’s the place to be, but what challenges do you see in the next year? And then I’m going to ask you about the future next, so get ready.

(7:31) Christina:
Sure. So I’ll actually start with a little bit of historical analysis. We moved here in 2012 and I wouldn’t even call us an early adopter to the I-29 corridor or the central plains is another term that is used interchangeably for our region. But we were kind of on the late end of the early adopters, the early end of kind of the big push of dairymen moving this way. At that point, the region was begging for dairymen. I know that the state of South Dakota had a booth every year at the World Ag Expo in the Central Valley in California to specifically talk to dairymen and ask them to come to South Dakota. It’s worked. There are dairymen, some that I knew from the Central Valley when I was a child there, some that have come from Ireland and the Netherlands that have made it out here and really taken advantage of this opportunity of growth.

And we have kind of hit a little snag, I guess you’d say. We are about out of processing space. We have contracts, but the new guys, you have to have a good connection to get into processing space. This is the Central Plains. We have a lot of land and not a lot of people. So there is space for building and for crops, for manure management. But without any major population centers, the easiest product to produce and move out of here for sale has been cheese. So that is another kind of challenge we face is we are 100% a class three market. I would love to see some diversity in that. There are still many dairymen interested in moving to the area because the states here are very ag-friendly and there is plenty of space. I’d love to get some new processors recruited as well as diversify the product mix.

And one of the other challenges I would say that we face right now is just, I think it’s the government’s lack of concern for negotiating trade deals. There is an export market out there that we are not pursuing very hard. That’s really helpful historical perspective and great to hear from a farmer too, just to think through like this is really what would help things to continue to grow. The area has grown so, so rapidly, but to your point, everything is filled up.

(10:06) Betty:
I hear about that from you and other folks that I know in the region. What do you think longer term might be some of the challenges that are faced? So for now we need more processing capacity, but I mean, if that comes online, what about in five years or even longer term, what issues are producers facing?

(10:27) Christina:
I would say land prices. Where I am in Northwest Iowa is a high land price area because we have great production. Also because we are close enough to some really strongly rooted communities. So there is just competition for land when it comes up for sale. But even in general, in some of the further out regions where land was relatively inexpensive for what you get, there is now competition from some developers from the kind of sprawling Sioux Falls region, as well as bringing in other dairymen that creates more competition.

Something that is a concern today and until we have any major movement on it, it is going to be a concern daily and through the next 20 years probably is labor. I mentioned I spend some of my HR time filling out and recruiting TN employees. We do not have enough employees that are able to milk. That is the lowest level job, but also some of the trades and specialties. I know finding plumbers and welders, mechanics, management. There are varying challenges at all those levels.

(11:40) Betty:
No, that makes sense. I think the labor issue is one that is pervasive across the country, regardless of where you are dairying. I love the creative solutions that I am hearing from dairy farms, but I think you hit the nail on the head as far as longer term challenges go.

Anything you want to share with folks about what you are going to be talking about in June or what you are looking forward to with our conference?

(12:06) Christina:
Sure. This will be my first time attending the conference. After looking at the speaker lineup, I am really excited just to hear from some of the analysts, especially on the international side. Like Betty had mentioned, my sister does some dairy analysis and shares a lot of that information with me. I love hearing how international events and international markets affect our dairy right here in Middle America.

I also think, from what I know, that the international market is just primed for growth. I would love, like I said, love to see us have that new processing online to be able to take advantage of those market conditions when they hit. I hope to share some of our thoughts on my life, my family farm, the goals we have. Obviously, growth is one of those, but we definitely are a family operation and we do encounter the challenges of labor and land competition as well as the environmental regulation. That is something that has really affected a lot of dairymen in the EU, Europe area. They have almost been regulated out of their livelihood. I hope that we can see that and find a way to incentivize us and work together to accomplish our environmental goals while still maintaining the integrity of the business within the industry.

(13:39) Betty:
Oh my goodness, you are so well-spoken on all of this. I really enjoy the balanced and bipartisan approach to it. We need to find ways to commonly meet these goals, so let’s all come to the table together and try to do that. We’re going to have a good time in Chicago.

I didn’t prep you for the last couple of questions. You’re going to have to forgive me, but what is your favorite dairy product?

(14:00) Christina:
I’m going to go with chocolate milk because it’s and easy. I do enjoy working out, exercise, sports, and it’s the number one recovery drink out there. I agree. I am a runner. Yes, that is a part of post-recovery along with a scoop of whey powder. Or if I have it in my fridge, Fair Life because that is a delicious product.

(14:26) Betty:
What is your favorite thing to do when you visit Chicago? I’m assuming you visited there sometimes as a kid if you were living in Michigan and maybe even now in Iowa.

(14:38) Christina:
Sure. We actually met my husband’s family there about a year and a half ago, so we took our kids to the city, which was an eye-opening experience for kids from rural Iowa. I will tell you my least favorite attraction is the Bean. I think it’s overrated, but my favorite attraction is the Buckingham Fountain, and it’s not far from the Bean, as well as the Museum of Science and Industry. It has an ad exhibit, but it’s got enough for kids and adults, and it is a very wonderful museum.

(15:13) Betty:
Okay, perfect. That’s really helpful. I am actually planning to bring the family to Chicago ahead of  the Outlook Conference, so really that’s the secret reason for asking. Now I have the list.

All right, we better wrap up here. Christina, thank you so much for agreeing to speak at the conference and for making some time in your busy schedule to be on our podcast today.

(15:34) Christina:
Thank you for having me. I look forward to meeting a bunch of the attendees here in June.

(15:40) Betty:
As a reminder, our Outlook Conference is June 18th to 20th. Registration is still open, so if you haven’t signed up yet, go to the website highgrounddairy.com/conference.