The World Dairy Expo, which opens this week, typically draws over 75,000 visitors from all over the world to the grounds of the Alliant Energy Center. Student members of the National Agricultural Marketing Association and the Badger Dairy Club in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences play a major role in coordinating the event.
“I recall attending the first event when it was a small show in 1966. Now it’s grown into a very mature world event,” CALS professor Tom Schomisch said.
Schomisch has served as an advisor to NAMA for 15 years. In that time he has seen people leave small farming towns and find their future employer through CALS and NAMA’s participation in the Expo.
“Dairy Expo is sort of a mini-internship,” Schomisch said.
According to U.S. Census Statistics, the business of agriculture in the U.S. accounts for approximately 22,732,653 jobs with only 6,146,906 of those jobs in non-metropolitan areas.
UW junior Jennifer Dierickx, chairperson for the NAMA group at UW, feels the World Dairy Expo allows her to “engage the industry she grew up in.”
“My grandmother passed the farm down to my mother, it’s been in the family for four generations. We’re hardcore farm women,” said Dierickx, who grew up on a farm in Monticello, Wis.
“I don’t want to return to farming but getting in contact with all the companies for this event and being in charge of organizing an aspect of this well-respected show, I can go to new places with something I know well,” Dierickx said.
During World Dairy Expo, NAMA members work for different companies exhibiting at the show and take attendee surveys for Farm Journal, a trade magazine serving the agriculture industry.
“Students are then responsible for tabulating all the surveys and then producing an actionable report so the Expo and the magazine know they are serving their audience,” Schomisch said.
According to Dierickx, companies pay student workers $15 an hour. Half of the hourly wage goes back to NAMA and will be used to pay for housing and travel to NAMA’s agricultural communications competition, April 20th in Phoenix.
From local farmers to agricultural financing professionals attending World Dairy Expo, the week is spent browsing booths with the latest in milking machines and attending seminars geared at improving efficiency.
The focus event of the week is the World Class Show where breeders enter prize livestock to compete for the title of World Championship Supreme Cow, according to Schomisch.
“[People] bring animals from Australia, Europe, all over,” Schomisch said.
UW students in the Badger Dairy Club are central coordinators for the competition.
According to Badger Dairy Club President Bonnie Berezowitz, members serve as the main workforce and are responsible for planning and helping construct the outside grounds where the dairy cattle shows and sales take place.
“This is our only fundraiser of the year, and if you’ve been working at the cheese stand all day like I have, you won’t want to eat another grilled cheese sandwich for a year,” Berezowitz said. “But it’s worth it because we use the money for scholarships and other activities.”
In the exhibition hall, Dierickx sat on the floor next to the Dairy Today booth, exhausted but excited after the first day.
“We miss a week of classes for this. It’s a crazy week but worth it,” Dierickx said. “You get excited to see people you know. The dairy business is a tight-knit world, kind of like the family farm.”
