The Teds assemble a full crew to approach the primary question on the milk market’s mind: What does a war in Europe mean for the dairy industry? To help answer that question, they’ve enlisted Norman Oldmeadow, a dairy industry veteran and current managing director of Oldmeadow Consulting.

Norman fields questions about Russia’s commercial relationship to the EU – as well as Ukraine’s – what happens to freight, and how Ukraine’s position as one of the world largest grain exporters signals more trouble ahead for milk production numbers. 

Along the way, Norman discusses some of the UK’s dairy issues that hit close to home for US farmers as well.

T3: Welcome everybody to our March podcast. We have a guest speaker today. His name is Norman Oldmeadow. I'll give Norm, in a second, a chance to introduce himself. We also have a bigger group today than our usual suspects of myself, my dad and Anna. Jacob Menge, our risk management and trading strategy director is on the line with us, Gus Jacoby, president of our fluid group; Don Street, our director of global strategy, as well as Norm have all joined us. And our topic today is: How is the conflict in the Ukraine going to affect dairy prices? Norm, why don't you lead us off? Tell us a little about yourself.

Norman Oldmeadow: Okay. Well, I first came across Don a long, long time ago. I got involved in the food industry in the seventies when I joined what you know as M&Ms, but in the UK it's called Mars. And that got me involved in the milk and dairy industry amongst other things, sugar and cocoa and so on. But once I left Mars, I got involved in the dairy trading world and subsequently ended up starting a business in 1992, which was called Meadow Foods. And Meadow Foods was started by me doing the trading. And I was financed by two guys, a chap called John Kerr who may be known to some of you with his company called Fairfield. And my immediate partner then was a chap called Simon Chantler, who I think at the time was milking about two and a half thousand cows on three farms. And I stayed with that business, running it for 17 years before I retired.

However, once I retired, the people that I'd been working with in various manufacturers and traders and the European market asked me if I'd like to set up a consultancy and do some additional work, which is basically what I have been doing since about the mid – well, I was 65 then, so 10 years really – and I'm trying to stop, but they keep asking me to carry on. I think I just get very interested in the topic. So that's me. I'm doing consultancy now. So I'm in everybody's pocket learning as much as I can and trying not to confuse too many people.

But I mean, the topic about Ukraine, the first thing you would say in Europe is: Ukraine, now, what do they do in the dairy industry? And you have to go back to the way in which the European Union is set up in the sense that nothing gets in unless they want it in and anything can get out that they can move. And for a long time, business with Ukraine was quite small, but over the last few years, the cheese business has improved, mainly from Poland and partly from Germany. And I think at the last count, they were importing about 50,000 tons. Not much else, a bit of whey probably, and I think some butter.

But in terms of absolute trade between Europe and Ukraine that's more or less it. There are much, much bigger fish to fry with dairy, of course, than there would be there. Now, I mean, you've got to remember that Ukraine is a huge agriculture-based country. I didn't realize until the other day that it's even bigger than France, and France is quite a big place when you look at it on a map. And they are probably one or two of the biggest wheat and grain exporters ...