to see each editor’s list. Read on for summaries and links to the articles selected. Tell us which article you liked the best in the section.

1. ‘Testing the waters: Why every U.S. dairy should care about a court case affecting five families in Washington
By Dave Wilkins

Summary: Our March 12, 2014 issue featured an in-depth package of stories that shared the struggles of five Yakima County dairy farms facing environmental lawsuits in which activists were pushing for cow manure to be regulated as solid waste. Freelance writer Dave Wilkins also detailed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Originally written to regulate solid waste, environmental activists were urging the Washington court to hold dairies to the same law. Wilkins also put specifics to the plaintiffs in the lawsuits – the Center for Food Safety and the Community Association for Restoration of the Environment. He then outlined what could happen as a result of the lawsuits, indicating that the dairies had a long, slow fight ahead of them.

progressive dairyman editor walt cooley

From the editor: This package of articles about an ongoing legal battle between dairy producers in Washington and environmental activists raised several eyebrows. After the article ran, I received several communications from producers around the country surprised by what they had read, and how if the activist group is successful, the court ruling may be used to apply to them. Some wanted to help, and financial support for the court battle is still needed. To donate to the legal defense effort, contact Jay Gordon of the Washington Agricultural Legal Foundation at William.walf@gmail.com
Progressive Dairyman Managing Editor Walt Cooley

2. ‘Technology test-drive’ series
By Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley

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Summary: This article series over the past year exposed readers to the implementation of new technology on forward-thinking dairy farms in a unique way. We partnered with three companies to give away exciting new technology to large-herd dairies and followed what they did with it. This approach removed the cost of the product as a barrier to farm use.

progressive dairyman editor walt cooley

From the editor: I believe readers were interested to follow along with the series and see for themselves the real-life results these producers found in test-driving the products. I observed that as “easy to use” as companies think their technology is when it’s introduced in the market, they usually underestimate how much technical support dairymen need to receive to get to optimal implementation and daily use of the product after initial training. So my advice to dairy producers when purchasing a new technology: Seriously consider how much after-sale support the company is willing to provide because you’ll likely overestimate how much time and attention you can dedicate yourself to training how to use it. When you ask other dairy producers who have a new technology how it worked for them, also ask how much help they needed to get it working.
Progressive Dairyman Managing Editor Walt Cooley

3. ‘Robotic milking startup: There doesn’t have to be a story to tell’
By Paul Berdell

Summary: This article, published in the May 7, 2014 issue, comes from the boots-on-the-ground expertise of robotic milking consultant Paul Berdell. He detailed seven areas producers should plan for when planning the robotic milking startup stage.

progressive dairyman editor karen lee

From the editor: Dairy producers looking to install automatic milking systems have the advantage of learning from those who already blazed the trail. I have personally interviewed a number of producers who started up robotic milking systems and learned their lessons the hard way. In this article, Berdell, a consultant who has helped install more than 90 of these systems in the past two years, offers tips for new robotic dairies to plan ahead so their startup experience might be a little easier. While I feel this is valuable information for dairy producers to utilize, it does worry me that it will actually reduce the number of farms with stories to tell and essentially put dairy editors out of work, or at least on the hunt for another angle.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Karen Lee

4. ‘Dairy prepares to turn manure into renewable diesel’ and ‘Farmer turns dairyman to diversify family operation
By Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley

Summary: Like many other producers in today’s agriculture industry, Bruce and Brad Scott of San Jacinto, California, (above) and Jack Pirtle of Roswell, New Mexico, (below) faced what seemed to be an impossible situation but were able to overcome it with the hard work and dedication that has kept their family farms running for generations. The Scott brothers used research and new technology to prove to the government that they were not negatively impacting the environment, allowing them to keep their permits and their dairy. When one of his customers backed out of a large contact, Pirtle, a man who had never owned a dairy cow in his life, chose to diversify his custom-crop operation by purchasing a foreclosed dairy farm with a herd of 600 low-end milk cows and Jersey crossbreds. The Pirtles were featured in the Jan. 1, 2014 issue, and the Scott family was highlighted in the Feb. 7, 2014 issue.

progressive dairyman editor jenna hurty

From the editor: These two articles stood out to me because these men encompass some of the qualities we admire most in the men and women of the agriculture industry. Through hard work, determination and a little ingenuity, they faced difficult situations and triumphed.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Jenna Hurty

5. ‘Older generation’s willingness to change humbles young producers
By Amie Howes

Summary: This article, published Sept. 12, 2014, was the second in a two-part series featuring the Bollinger family of Lititz, Pennsylvania. In the first article, Tom and Sue Bollinger discussed how they wanted to provide a better farm transition than what they had gone through. In this piece, Andy and Andrea Bollinger shared the importance of open communication with Andy’s father and siblings.

progressive dairyman publisher alan leavitt

From the publisher: Exiting the dairy business is a daily reality for a handful of producers nationwide. This article gives me hope to see a younger generation’s willingness to “do whatever it takes” to succeed, and an older generation’s ability to see that desire and provide mentoring and support necessary to achieve success with the eventual transfer of earned ownership. This was one of a two-part series about farm transfer. Both were well-written and struck a chord with me.
Progressive Dairyman Publisher Alan Leavitt

6. ‘The universe needed to send me to Yuma
By Progressive Dairyman Editor Walt Cooley

Summary: Walt Cooley’s editorial from the Sept. 12, 2014 issue talks about a travel experience gone awry. He was flying from Fresno, California, to Phoenix, Arizona, when a thunderstorm prevented the plane from landing. The passengers were re-routed to Yuma, Arizona, much to the delight of a woman seated in front of Cooley. It turns out her son was a marine and was stationed nearby the civilian-military airport where the plane had landed.

progressive dairyman editor lynn jaynes

From the editor: Dairy and ag editors have the best job in the world. The upside is that we get to walk among cows and muck-booted dairymen in many parts of the country and write about those experiences. The downside is that for brevity, focus and in the name of education, we often have to write in a fashion that seems fact-driven, terse, condensed, full of technical charts and sometimes sterile.

What we don’t often get to share are the “side stories” that happen along the way as we go about collecting those articles to move dairy businesses forward. In our industry, the research constitutes the skeleton, the educational article treatments provide the meat and hide, but the side stories are the sinews that hold it all together and yet are largely ignored. In this article, Editor Walt Cooley takes a rare moment to share a thread of sinew – a side story.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Lynn Jaynes

7. ‘Graduate farm kids into real life
By Andy Junkin

Summary: Consultant Andy Junkin takes a no-holds-barred approach in this Oct. 1, 2014 article. Entitlement, he says, is one of the biggest issues that impacts farm succession.

“For anyone having a kid graduate from college this summer, the best present you can give them is $1,000 and the help wanted section from a farm paper in a different state,” he wrote.

He provides several more examples of straightforward ways to encourage the next generation to be properly prepared for taking over farm ownership.

progressive dairyman editor karen lee

From the editor: This article really hit home for me. Maybe it is because I’m a millennial and entitlement goes hand in hand with my generation. Even though I’m guilty of falling into the entitlement trap from time to time, I have also bucked that trend and stuck my neck out on my own more than I probably should have to make me, and likely my concerned parents, sleep soundly at night. However, it is in those moments that I learned some of life’s best lessons. I believe Andy Junkin’s encouragement for farm kids to step away from the family farm will yield stronger farm managers (and one day successful owners) that will perpetuate our dairy industry.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Karen Lee

8. ‘Milk quality is everyone’s responsibility
By Jessica Belsito

Summary: This Jan. 1, 2014 article centers around the story of a dairy that lost its premiums due to high PI counts. The producer checked and cleaned everything on his dairy, even though he didn’t think that was the problem. Nothing changed. He began taking his own samples from the drip line. Eventually, the producer discovers that the problem was actually caused by the truck driver allowing his truck to sit all weekend, giving the bacteria a chance to multiply.

progressive dairyman editor jenna hurty

From the editor: What I really liked about this article was how the author, Jessica Belsito, used a story to make her point. Since the federal government doesn’t regulate PI counts, Belsito stresses to producers the importance of being familiar with the sampling, storage, handling procedures and quality standards at their creamery or co-op. This way, should a quality control problem arise, they will know where all to look.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Jenna Hurty

9. ‘Every Drop Counts: Ron and Jodi Ditter

Summary: In the June 12, 2014 issue, we launched a new department that highlights the entire farm-to-fork process and celebrates the role that one dairy farming family plays in providing food to the masses. Our first “Every Drop Counts” featured Ron and Jodi Ditter of Chilton, Wisconsin, who are members of Family Dairies USA, a division of FarmFirst Dairy Cooperative.

progressive dairyman editor emily caldwell

From the editor: We all know the “Milk from cow to you” story, but this department gives us a look at how producers’ milk is pooled together in the overall goal to produce quality dairy products and ingredients. In 2015, we look forward to sharing more supply chain snapshots from producers and co-ops.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Emily Caldwell

10. ‘Burn the boats’ four-part series
By Yevet Tenney

Summary: Beginning with our July 19, 2014 issue, Progressive Dairyman published a series of columns from a popular contributor, Yevet Tenney. Over the course of four issues, Tenney urged readers to treat their marriages in the same way that Hernán Cortés achieved the conquest of an impregnable Aztec city in the early 1500s. Tenney wrote that, “Cortés’ battle plan was unique: ‘burn the boats,’ not giving himself or his army a path for retreat. It was a matter of win or die. They would conquer and return home in their enemies’ boats or they would be carrion for the buzzards.”

progressive dairyman editor peggy coffeen

From the editor: While many of our readers open the pages of Progressive Dairyman seeking the latest research and technology in the dairy industry, there is one page that more often features words from a book that is thousands of years old yet never outdated. Yevet Tenney’s column, “Just Dropping By,” has become one of my personal favorites.

As a wife and mother, I appreciate her stories of Christian values, and I particularly enjoyed her four-part series called “Burn the boats,” where she encouraged married couples to strengthen their relationships by eliminating the easy ways out that our society has come to accept. In the competitive age of media, it is tempting for publications to “sell their souls,” so to speak, by abandoning their core values. But at Progressive Publishing, those values remain the soul of a family-owned company that isn’t afraid to give faith a place in our pages.
Progressive Dairyman Editor Peggy Coffeen

Select a link below to see that editor's top selections of 2014 articles.







Emily Caldwell

1. Every Drop Counts: Ron and Jodi Ditter
2. Milk quality is everyone’s responsibility
3. ‘Technology test-drive’ series
4. How I work: A day in my life… Shane McCoy
5. Writing the future of your dairy farm
6. Check out my… Robots and racing stripes
7. Robotic milking startup: There doesn’t have to be a story to tell
8. Older generation’s willingness to change humbles young producers
9. Progressive Dairyman's University Review
10. HERd management: Just 'Google it' dairy

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1. ‘Burn the boats’ four-part series
2. Confessions of a ‘pretty cow’ lover and follow up Confessions of an ‘ugly cow’ lover
3. Digital dermatitis: A recipe for successful control
4. Writing the future of your dairy farm
5. The four elements of freestall design
6. Farmer turns dairyman to diversify family operation
7. Every Drop Counts: Ron and Jodi Ditter
8. Test your drug residue IQ
9. The journey from conventional to robotic milking begins here
10. What you need to know about selection indexes

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1. Dairy prepares to turn manure into renewable diesel
2. ‘Technology test-drive’ series
3. Just how strong are profit margins for dairy producers
4. Coaching employees is personal
5. Testing the waters: Why every U.S. dairy should care about a court case affecting five families in Washington
6. Robotic milking startup: There doesn’t have to be a story to tell
7. Tom Heck's columns
8. To be successful in agritourism, you need a passion for people
9. Wisconsin dairy breaks ground for largest automatic rotary parlor
10. Check Out My ... New additions provide elite cattle with world-class care

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1. To hashtag or not to hashtag
2. Roundtable: Lessons of calf and heifer wellness
3. ‘Who moved the goalpost?’ - Teams should never have to ask
4. She really loves her calves
5. Testing the waters: Why every U.S. dairy should care about a court case affecting five families in Washington
6. Staging a genetic intervention
7. Milk quality is everyone’s responsibility
8. Farmer turns dairyman to diversify family operation
9. Eye for art, demand for detail keeps DeBruin in photography
10. Experts provide perspectives on undercover videos

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1. The myth of high-forage diets
2. The universe needed to send me to Yuma
3. Are dairymen responsible when meat recalls occur?
4. Testing the waters: Why every U.S. dairy should care about a court case affecting five families in Washington
5. ‘Technology test-drive’ series
6. Honey, your cell phone’s ringing … it’s your tractor calling
7. Why do dairy farmers belong to cooperatives?
8. Shredlage: Fad or fashion?
9. The who, when, what and how for handling a down cow
10. 7 habits of highly effective hoof trimmers

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1. Older generation’s willingness to change humbles young producers
2. Breaking 90: Two dairymen talk feed and nutrition
3. Breeding the 50,000-lb cow
4. The universe needed to send me to Yuma
5. Graduate farm kids into real life
6. The best gift you can give your employees
7. Testing the waters: Why every U.S. dairy should care about a court case affecting five families in Washington
8. 5 unique life lessons from cows
9. Dairy prepares to turn manure into renewable diesel
10. ‘Burn the boats’ four-part series

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1. Testing the waters: Why every U.S. dairy should care about a court case affecting five families in Washington
2. The who, when, what and how for handling a down cow
3. Cattle housing pavilions to transform WDE experience
4. Crystal-clear liners and shells shed light into milking process
5. Half of Holstein heifer calves could be polled by 2034
6. With photos, dairy could prove: ‘It didn’t happen under my care’
7. Waste not: Transforming manure
8. Worm manure: A filter for clean water
9. Robotic milking startup: There doesn’t have to be a story to tell
10. Graduate farm kids into real life

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