Since the first of the year, more than 180 dairy producers across the Midwest have gone to Midwest Dairy Association’s Producer Service Center for help with their promotion needs. More importantly, the materials and services they received helped them reach more than 70,000 consumers. With June Dairy Month approaching, access to what the Center offers becomes even more important. Dairy farm families hosting events or helping industry partners honor the industry have a direct line to free items that range from “I Met a Dairy Farmer” stickers to plastic sheeting for parade floats, fact sheets about farm practices, and camera-ready graphics and copy for advertisements. Other free items include recipe brochures, videos, exhibit booths and a coloring pad for kids.

The Producer Service Center will also design custom brochures for individual farms and provide the first 200 color copies free of charge. The farm family keeps the computer file for printing additional copies.

A Farm Tour Kit, a handbook to help with public relations plans and a classroom presentation kit called “Farm to Food to You” are also among the offerings.

“We really want to make it easy for everyone to promote dairy,” said Karen Bohnert, who handles the requests and questions coming into the Center. “Even if they aren’t sure what they want and what we have, we’re there to help, whether it’s for June Dairy Month or any other time of the year.”

The Producer Service Center can be accessed by calling (877) 360-FARM (3276), by e-mailing producerservicecenter@midwestdairy.com or by requesting a user name and password at midwestdairycheckoff.com. At the website, users won’t see the Producer Service Center section until they have requested their login information and have been approved.

The Center also provides a list of resources that can be purchased by local promotion groups or individual promoters. Items include apparel, billboards, signage, coloring murals, banners and a variety of other dairy-themed premiums.

In order to access the Center’s free materials, producers must be contributing to Midwest Dairy Association through the dairy checkoff on their milk sales. PD

—From Midwest Dairy Association news release