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 Years Ago:

1950 – Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

About 56 people attended this 3-day meeting at the Fort Garry Hotel. Mr. Gilbert McMillan described the importance of the dairy industry to Canada, and included some statistics. About 17% of the Canadian population was involved in the dairy industry, and produced 16.78 billion pounds of milk from 3,620,000 cows.

There were several presentations dealing with prices. This included the “Price of Milk in Relation to Other Prices”; “Farmers’ Responses in Milk Production to Price Changes”; “The Consumer Opinion of the Price of Milk”; and “Supply and Demand of Fluid Milk When Not Affected by Retail Price Fixing.”

48 Years Ago:

1972 – Hershey, Pennsylvania

About 109 people attended this 3-day meeting at the Hotel Hershey. Topics covered included a description of the Puerto Rican Milk Promotion Fund, topics related to the regulation of milk distribution, and viewpoints of milk regulations from the perspectives of a dairy farmer and a milk distributor.