Our passion

We act ethically in all matters without exception.

We are passionate about the land we are charged to protect, the animals we care for, the employees we work with, our Cooperative and the communities we serve. This passion fuels us to be the best at what we do — delivering all the possibilities of dairy to our neighbors down the road and around the world.

We are committed to quality – the quality of our farms, our plants, our products, our brands, our services and our way of doing business. 

We are a community of American family farmers and employees bound by our shared values. We understand our impact on society and our role as part of the billion-person-strong global dairy community. This connection inspires us to be an integral part of all the communities we touch, starting with the local towns where we live, work and raise our families, to those communities we reach with our products.

We're grounded in our farmer ownership and are always looking for new ways to grow and invest that will benefit our family farmers. Today, DFA's more than 10,000 dairy farmers produce the ingredients for cheese, butter, ice cream, fluid milk and more under well-known, quality national and regional brands. So, no matter where you are in the country, one of our local family farms is bringing you delicious dairy.

Grounded in farmer ownership, DFA is a global food Cooperative focused on quality, innovation and the future. Our reach is international, but it all starts local. Our organization is here to support all of our family farms so they have the resources and tools they need to keep putting high-quality dairy on your table.

By 1996, the dairy industry was changing rapidly. The old way of doing dairy just wasn’t keeping up with the demand, so leaders from four of the nation’s leading milk organizations – Associated Milk Producers, Inc., Mid-America Dairymen, Inc., Milk Marketing, Inc. and Western Dairymen Cooperative, Inc. – decided to move forward. They created a new, more efficient organization to provide resources and support to family farms of all sizes, and on Jan. 1, 1998, DFA was formed.