Impact of COVID-19 on the Canadian Dairy Industry

As was probably the case in most dairy countries, the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on the dairy supply chain in Canada. Suddenly, restaurants, coffee shops, schools and daycares closed, and consumers rushed to the grocery stores to stock up on essentials. Retail sales for dairy products are now extremely volatile. Data below show variations in sales of a few dairy products for the four weeks ending at the end of February, March and April, compared to the same...
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Getting Accurate, Useful, and Timely Data in a Time of Disruption

In a recent newsletter, IAMCA reached out to ask our readers for their ‘go to’ sources of statistical information. Shortly thereafter, this new challenge to the dairy markets occurred. Speaking for our New York market only, our processors and manufacturers were impacted quickly, and in unique ways. Seemingly overnight, the market for consumer fluid products from retail groceries dramatically increased. There were many instances where milk was not to be found and stores began limiting pur...
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Aged Chatter – IAMCA Through the Years

I have heard from my colleagues in the industry that some of the same issues and discussions keep coming up. To see it this is true, I have combed the IAMCA archive’s past conferences to see what the hot topics were at the time. Here are the results of my ‘non-statistical’ study: Please forgive the brevity of this article. As with most, we have had to transition to remote working, and the notes and references from past meetings are sitting in hard copy ‘back at the office.’ 70...
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IAMCA and COVID 19

My subtitle for this article could have been “Where do we go from here?”. I was looking forward to the opportunity to host the 2020 IAMCA AGM here in Canada’s smallest province this July, but the pandemic has grounded travel and blocked our opportunity to gather. Announcing the cancelation of the 2020 AGM was very disappointing, but it was obviously necessary. It will be months before we can even start to think about holding large gatherings here, as our provincial state of emergency conti...
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