By Lauren Collier, T&K Dairy, Snyder, Texas, and Dairy MAX and National Dairy Board member.
Following the 2026 Joint Annual Meeting in Florida, Lauren shares her perspective as a Texas dairy farmer on the conversations shaping the future of dairy. From research and innovation to consumer trust and growing dairy demand, she reflects on what stood out, what she learned and why she’s optimistic about the industry’s future.
I am fresh off the plane from another Joint Annual Meeting, this year in sunny Florida. I packed sunscreen and never opened it, because I spent most of the trip indoors talking about dairy. My kind of trip!
I came home feeling revived and relieved. Revived, because there are some really smart people finding new ways to sell more dairy. Relieved, because as a farmer, I could sit there and think, “OK, they get it.” They understand what consumers want, where they are getting their information and where dairy has an opportunity to grow.
A little about me. I didn’t grow up on a dairy. I was a high school freshman at an FFA convention when a college kid named Will Collier got up to speak about his cows. I leaned over and told my friend I was going to marry him. When we finally started dating, Will told me I was number 2,001, right behind his 2,000 cows. He even asked if the preacher could marry us in the milk parlor so he wouldn’t have to take off. Thankfully his mom talked him out of that one. So, that is how a girl who didn’t grow up on a dairy ended up marrying into T&K Dairy, which was started by Will’s parents, Tim and Connie, and his grandparents, Keith and Janice.
These days I run the office and the books, which makes me the person at our dinner table who asks, “And what does that cost?” I have served on the Dairy MAX board for two years, and I also sit on the National Dairy Board. My reason is simple. I want a strong dairy operation with an even stronger industry waiting for my kids if they want it. Our youngest, Jagger, already says he sees himself taking over the dairy, and I want to hand him a dairy that is stronger than when we started and an industry with room for him to build something of his own.
Farming will teach you pretty quickly that doing something the way you have always done it is not a good enough reason to keep doing it that way. Back in 2018, I thought our robotic barn was about the most innovative thing going. And at the time, I’ll give myself some credit, it was. I first pitched it after we saw robots at a convention, and Will pushed back. And I understood his hesitancy about being first. A few years later, when hiring got harder, he was the one convincing me. We became the first fully automated robotic milking barn in Texas and one of the first in the world to use that particular system. Now each cow decides when she wants to be milked.
We make investments on our dairy all the time without knowing exactly what the next 10 years will bring. You look at the information in front of you, decide where the opportunity is headed and put your money where you believe it will make the operation stronger. Sitting in those meetings, I realized checkoff really isn’t that different.
Maybe that is the bookkeeper in me, but I am always asking how we can work smarter, not just harder. Sitting in a room with dairy leaders from across the country drove that home. This industry is smart, and our 15 cents are being put to work in more ways than I realized.
How Is the Dairy Checkoff Building Consumer Trust and Demand?
What struck me was how far upstream the checkoff is working. It isn’t just promoting the gallon of milk already sitting in the cooler. It is helping create research, products and partnerships that determine what people may be buying five or 10 years from now. We heard about the checkoff’s work with Mayo Clinic, and next-generation milk molecule research that goes beyond protein. My mom has been in the hospital over the last few months after a sudden cardiac arrest, so hearing about the research on dairy and heart health was particularly interesting to me. She always focused on a low-fat diet to ensure a healthy heart. But as I learned at Joint Annual Meeting, checkoff-funded research is challenging some long-held assumptions about full-fat dairy and heart health. It turns out milk has been holding out on us all these years!
We also saw foodservice partners creating new dairy-based beverages, and marketing messages around health and wellness making their way into grocery stores. I’ll admit I left that session hungry, so I headed to the Dairy Bar, where I tried one of the newer products focused on the health messages the dairy checkoff is leaning so heavily into: high-protein yogurt. It sufficiently satisfied my cravings, as I’m sure it does for so many others!
Another session I attended talked about where people are getting their information on food and nutrition today: digital and online sources, social media creators, healthcare professionals, artificial intelligence, mainstream media, family and friends. My kids get their information from their phones. I get mine from my kids, who got it from their phones. I can tell someone all day long that we take good care of our cows and work hard to produce a good product. But I also know I am probably not the person every consumer is going to listen to. Sometimes they need to hear it from their doctor, a dietitian, someone they follow online or a source they already trust. Seeing that our checkoff understands that and is making sure dairy has credible voices in those spaces mattered to me.
The national meeting gives me the big picture. Our Dairy MAX board meetings are where I get to see how that work comes to life in our region. This board meeting was especially fun because we got to see a video highlighting the work our team is doing in market right now. In a matter of minutes, we saw dairy showing up in schools, on menus, with sports partners and in places consumers are already shopping. Those are the programs we have talked about around the board table, but seeing them out in the market is different. You realize, “There it is. That is what we approved.”
Then we get to the budget, and that is when the bookkeeper in me really perks up. Because I balance the books on our farm, I don’t take anyone’s money lightly, especially mine. I want to know where it went, why we spent it and what it accomplished. We can see exactly where the dollars go and what we get out of them. Some investments are easier to tie directly to pounds of dairy sold. Others are about protecting the trust that makes those sales possible in the first place. I have come to appreciate that we need both.
Why Should Dairy Farmers Feel Optimistic About the Future?
Looking ahead to 2027, we are building partnerships around innovation. We’ve focused on bringing universities, researchers, processors and food and beverage companies to the same table with the goal of moving a good idea from research to a product that people can actually purchase in the store. These partnerships also train the next generation of dairy and food innovators along the way. This is the same kind of big-idea thinking we took with robots at T&K because we believed in where dairy was headed. I see this the same way: investing now in the people and ideas that will shape what dairy looks like next.
People ask me why I spend time away from the farm for board meetings and conferences. My answer is that the checkoff is driving dairy demand today and building it for tomorrow. That gives my kids, and kids like them, a real shot at dairying for generations to come.
I don’t know who we’d be if we weren’t dairy farmers. I just want my kids and grandkids to have the same opportunity to choose this life that Will and I had. After these meetings, I came home feeling like we are doing the work now to make that possible.
