Ioannis Kaimakamis

What a London dairy conference tells us about real farms

It is easy to get lost in slides, buzzwords, and acronyms when I sit through two full days of presentations. This happens at a major dairy conference in London in 2025. Yet, what stayed with me was not a single chart. There was no “big announcement” either. Instead, a structural tension ran through almost every session.

Upstream, in farms and processing plants, the conversation is still dominated by volumes, capacities, trade flows and cost of production. Downstream, in retail, nutrition, pharma, and digital health, the conversation has already moved on to other topics. These include metabolic health, GLP-1, functional ingredients, bioactives, and precision nutrition. Between these worlds, there is now a visible gap. It is not clear who will bridge it. It is also unclear who will capture the value that emerges in the process.

The London discussions made one thing very clear to me. In dairy, the question is no longer “How much can we produce?” but “Is what we produce relevant to how people will eat in the next decade? Does it align with how they will manage their health?”

And that has consequences all the way back to the farm.

The GLP-1 shock: when demand shrinks and upgrades at the same time

I had never given much thought to GLP-1 agonists beyond the headlines about “weight-loss injections”. The sessions in London forced me to think of them as a structural demand shock.

If a growing number of consumers eat fewer calories daily, they become more selective. They focus on the quality and functionality of those calories. Then, the traditional focus on volume in dairy becomes fragile. The world of “cheap litres” and “bulk cheese” is not vanishing. But, growth, margins, and the narrative are clearly shifting elsewhere.

Three messages were repeated in different ways:

• The “eating occasion” is shrinking in volume but expanding in expectations.
• Generalised “healthy” positioning is no longer enough; products must be metabolically meaningful.
• GLP-1 is not a fad. Newer, more targeted versions of these drugs are already in development, extending beyond obesity into cardiovascular and metabolic risk management.

In this environment, the clear opportunity for dairy is not to compete with GLP-1. Instead, it should become the default carrier of protein, micronutrients, and bioactives. These elements are relevant in a GLP-1 world. That means:

• Protein- and fibre-dense foods that earn their place in a smaller calorie budget.
• Fermented and cultured products that interact credibly with gut health and inflammation.
• Formats and portions that fit into the daily “health routine” rather than the old three-meal structure.

If you are managing a dairy portfolio, you must regularly review it in light of this shift. Otherwise, you are already falling behind.

Cheese as engine, whey as strategy

One of the most striking points was how cheese relates to the economics of dairy. This is especially true in the US and the EU. Cheese is still the strategic engine. But it is an engine with structural constraints. These include capacity, fat and protein specifications, and export logistics. Additionally, there is an increasingly complex regulatory environment around nutrition claims and environmental footprints.

The real story, however, is what happens around cheese. For years, whey was treated as a by-product to be managed. Today, it is increasingly a strategic asset. The rise of high-protein snacks, medical nutrition, and sports performance products has driven this change. Immunity-linked ingredients also contribute. Even “healthy ageing” solutions play a role. These changes have turned whey and its fractions into an arena of convergence. Here, pharma, nutrition, and dairy collide.

The London discussions showed that:

• The new value in whey is not just in commodity concentrates. It is in fractionation and functionality. This includes specific peptides, tailored blends, and clinically tested benefits.
• The winners will be those who can align milk composition with processing and application development. Success won’t come to those who simply “have more whey”.
• The question for large cheese exporters is no longer only “Where will we sell the cheese?” but “How will we absorb, upgrade and monetize the whey if GLP-1 reduces total cheese and pizza consumption?”

The structural logic of the dairy plant is undergoing a transformation. It is moving from “cheese + leftover whey” to “integrated protein and bioactives factory.” Cheese will become one of several core outputs.

From sustainability slogans to profitable, designed-for-volatility farms

It was refreshing – and sobering – to hear something very simple against this highly financial and technological backdrop. Farms must be profitable to be sustainable. Not in five years, not on paper, but now.

Several case studies offer valuable insights. These include regenerative hops in the US and protein-focused dairy farms in the EU. They underlined that real transformation does not come from single interventions. It comes from compounding many small, disciplined changes under a coherent economic logic.

Two tensions stood out:

• In New Zealand and other market-driven systems, farmers live with price volatility. Yet, they retain more strategic freedom. It forces resilience and innovation.
• In the EU, CAP reform, climate rules and reporting obligations create what many farmers experience as “compliance fatigue”. The risk is that regulation becomes a substitute for strategy: everyone is busy, nobody is truly profitable.

Across both models, the same conclusion emerged. The farms that will thrive in the next decade will not necessarily be the biggest. They will not be the most “traditional”. They will be the ones explicitly designed for volatility in herd structure and feeding systems. They will also be designed for variability in the labor model. Additionally, they will be tailored for changes in technology stack and market channels. Profitability will be treated as a non-negotiable design parameter, not a residual outcome.

AI came up repeatedly not as a buzzword, but as infrastructure. AI is quietly integrating into the operating system of global dairy. It is involved in individual cow monitoring and ration optimization. AI also aids in processing-plant scheduling and logistics. The value, though, will only be realized where someone is responsible for turning data into concrete decisions. These decisions involve feed, culling, heifer rearing, investments, and contracts.

MAHA, wearables and the new health stack around dairy

A particularly interesting thread was the “Make America Healthy Again” narrative – MAHA for short. Behind the slogan is a broader global trend. There is a slow convergence of public health policy, consumer expectations, and industry innovation around metabolic health.

Three elements are converging:

1. Policy and regulation. Governments are under pressure to curb obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Sugar taxes, front-of-pack labelling and dietary guidelines are all moving in a consistent direction. They are shifting away from empty calories and focusing on nutrient density and metabolic impact.
2. Technology and data. Wearable health tech, like smart watches and continuous glucose monitors, provides real-time feedback. Consumers can see how their bodies respond to food. This is a game changer for categories like dairy, where individual responses to lactose, fat and protein vary widely.
3. Ingredient and product innovation. Precision fermentation, microbiome science and AI-driven formulation are accelerating the development of new dairy and “next to dairy” products. Many of them use whey, permeate and fat fractions not as waste streams, but as foundations for premium health ingredients.

In this context, products like high-protein yoghurt are not fringe experiments. Fermented drinks with targeted cultures, “regenerative milk” or “carbon-neutral yoghurt” are also not fringe experiments. They are early signals of how mainstream dairy could be repositioned: from bulk calories to premium health enabler.

For this to work, though, R&D, nutrition science, sensory design, farming and regulatory affairs must stop operating in silos. The most impressive initiatives presented in London were precisely those where these functions collaborated closely. They sat at the same table from the beginning.

Three uncomfortable questions for the next decade

By the end of the conference, three questions kept resurfacing in my mind:

• How will the US absorb its cheese and whey capacity? GLP-1 and MAHA may reduce demand for traditional high-calorie, high-volume formats.
• How will EU suppliers meet increasingly strict fat and protein specifications with smaller, ageing herds and rising environmental constraints?
• Can New Zealand and Latin American exporters maintain competitiveness? Regulatory expectations on carbon, biodiversity, and animal welfare are fragmenting by market.

These are not abstract questions for analysts. They will shape investment decisions in farms, plants, and ports. They will influence the design of breeding programmes and the next generation of feeding and health protocols. Ultimately, they will affect the incomes of farmers and workers.

What this all means if you run real farms

Returning from London to the reality of Greece, the contrast is sharp – but the message is the same.

If we continue to think of milk only as litres and cheese only as kilos, we will fall behind. We need to change our perspective. The market is moving towards functions: protein quality, digestibility, metabolic impact, environmental footprint, story and data. That does not mean we should chase every trend or rebrand every product as “functional”. It does mean that:

• Herds, rations and genetics must slowly be aligned with solids, not just litres.
• Farm and plant data must be organised properly. This organisation ensures we can prove our efforts in sustainability and animal health. It goes beyond merely claiming them.
• Our contracts, partnerships and investment decisions should reflect not only today’s commodity logic, but tomorrow’s health and nutrition logic.

The London conference was a reminder that dairy sits at the crossroads of three systems: food, health and climate. That makes our work messier and more exposed – in terms of capital, reputation, data and risk. It also makes it more important.

For those of us in livestock, “simply adapting” is not enough. Making small, reactive changes around the edges will not suffice. The challenge is to redesign our models. We must ensure profitability is built in from the start. Volatility management and nutritional relevance should also be integrated from the beginning.

That is a harder road than chasing the next subsidy or the next short-term price spike. The conversations in London suggest it is the only road. This path leads to a feasible role for dairy in tomorrow’s wellness economy.

West London, May 2025 – far from the farm gate. However, it is close to where decisions about GLP-1, whey, and the future of dairy are made.