The Summit is a series of parallel conferences covering Nutrition & Health, Marketing, Methods of Analysis, Animal Health, Animal Feeding, Farm Management, Dairy Policies & Economics, Dairy Science & Technology, Food Safety, Sustainability and the Environment among them.
A huge variety of subjects and a myriad experts. The problems, though, is that the various conferences overlap and you have to choose which presentations to attend and end up darting from one conference to another.
Among the highlights for me was the Marketing conference. There were some great examples of campaigns, especially those involving social media. Some impressive facts and figures were delivered as speakers explained how they used this modern and growing phenomenon. But Vivien Godfrey, CEO of MilkPEP warned delegates not to scrap the more traditional forms of marketing – just yet.
The publication of the IDF World Dairy Situation report – during the Dairy Policies & Economics conference is usually a popular highlight. Adriaan Krijger from the Dutch Dairy Board gave us a flavour of what was in the report.
In the same conference I particularly enjoyed the paper from Benoit Rouyer, Chief Economist in CNIEL in France, looking at the history of major mergers and acquisitions around the global dairy industry in past years. It was fascinating and I am sure there were many in the audience who have been involved in the industry for quite a long time – like me – and who thought “Gosh, I remember that company”. I thought perhaps it was a bit remiss to get so much enjoyment from a session that looked back instead of forward.
But another speaker quoted British Prime Minister Winston Churchill: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.”
With DMK and DOC Kaas announcing, the week before the Summit, plans to merge their business operations, and with many other such moves predicted, it would be interesting to hear a similar paper in, say, five years’ time.
On the first day we had the IDF SWIFT session, designed to demonstrate Speed, Worldwide Visibility, Impact, Focus and Transparency of IDF in serving the global dairy industry. IDF has adopted this SWIFT approach as driver for the further development of the organisation. The six key concepts ensure the organisation continues to deliver timely outcomes that meet expectations and the changing needs of IDF membership. Supported by a brief overview of some of the most significant cases, the IDF SWIFT session gave participants a flavour of the significant impact that IDF has on key factors affecting the dairy sector worldwide and how these are being addressed in a speedy, focused and transparent manner providing value to all dairy stakeholders.
The Global Dairy Agenda for Action was launched by the dairy sector at the Berlin Summit in 2009 and signed by six international organisations. It was designed to address climate change and to continually improve the sustainability of the milk supply process. Through this world-wide cooperation, the dairy sector shares information, adopts strategies and changes practices to achieve a more efficient and sustainable dairy production for an increasing global population.
On the final day of the Summit we had the first official report on progress. The session demonstrated that the sector continues to fulfil its commitment through action and collaborative engagement.
On the dairy-sustainability-initiative.org website, the Green Paper is an online catalogue of initiatives – with 400 currently on the list. Global Dairy Platform Executive Director described this database as “a living organism”. He told the audience that we were on a journey. There wasn’t a final destination where we can say ‘we’ve arrived’ – because the journey will have to go on.
As one speaker pointed out, it is sometimes easier to make impressive savings in greenhouse gas emissions, or energy and water usage in the earlier days of a project. But it then becomes harder and harder to deliver more savings. That’s when we have to motivate people and encourage them not to get despondent and give up.
And then there was the IDF Dairy Innovation Awards. I was able to show a video listing the entrants and announcing the finalists, highly commended and – finally – the winners. Congratulations to everyone!
So a full week of activity. Hectic but enjoyable. There was a lot of great networking – and ham, lots of ham, lots and lots of ham…
There will be more about IDF World Dairy Summit 2011 in the next issue of Dairy Innovation magazine.
The video showing the entrants, finalists and winners of the Awards – and a gallery of photos from the Awards presentation can be seen on this website.
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