Designing a Regional Dairy Workforce Program for the Northeast
The dairy industry is critical to the Northeast economy, landscape, and regional culture.
Nationally, the dairy sector supports over 3.3 million jobs and an estimated $41.6B in direct wages. Despite its strength and scale, the Northeast region’s dairy industry faces barriers to growth and to meeting existing market demand.
Workforce related challenges are one central barrier.
To address these challenges, NE-DBIC contracted Karen Karp & Partners (KK&P), a food system consultancy, to examine dairy industry workforce challenges across our 11-state region.
The goal of this project is twofold:
- To execute research to understand the nuance of regional dairy businesses’ workforce challenges, including identifying a small set of specific, high priority occupations in need of support
- To use research findings to develop an implementation plan for a pilot workforce program designed to alleviate those challenges
Read the Report:
Learn about key interview findings, data analysis, the current dairy workforce landscape, and strategies to enhance the workforce ecosystem in KK&P’s final report.
The Dairy Workforce Impact Fund
From fall 2024 through fall 2026, the Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center will pilot the Dairy Workforce Impact Fund, designed to spark, grow, share, and invest in solutions to key workforce challenges experienced by Northeast dairy agricultural and processing businesses and their employees.
In this webinar, we walk through the framework for the Fund, the research that undergirds the Fund, and how the Fund will accomplish its mission through two distinct approaches:
- Catalyze: Provide catalytic funding to pilot, strengthen, and expand regional workforce initiatives that are poised for increased reach and impact.
- Convene: Lead through convening, bringing key stakeholders together for targeted peer-to-peer learning, collaboration, networking, problem-solving, and extending localized experiences across the region.