The Central Plains Dairy’s Golf Classic will be Wednesday, Aug. 3 at the Rocky Run Golf Course, Dell Rapids, South Dakota. Cost is $80 per person. The price includes lunch, dinner, golf cart, green fees and drinks on the course. There will be two flights with place winners in each flight. There’s a cash prize of $5,000 to the first hole-in-one on hole #6. There is also the chance to win a Carnival Cruise on #11, a Hawaiian vacation on #17 and the U.S. Open vacation on #11. Pin prizes can be won on every hole, too. Mulligans will be sold at $20 per foursome and a tree tax will be collected.

Midwest Dairy Association has announced the nine Kansas City Division winners of the Midwest Dairy Educational Award, a $500 scholarship for college expenses. “On behalf of the Kansas City Division board, I want to congratulate each award winner. Midwest Dairy offers this educational award as a way to thank farmers for their hard work and help their children pay for school,” said Byron Lehman, Newton, Kansas, who chairs the board.

The president of the Iowa Farm Bureau will lead the board that governs Iowa’s public universities after his colleagues voted to carry out a personnel shake-up orchestrated by Republican Gov. Terry Branstad. One day after David Miles, the Board of Regents president, and Jack Evans, its president pro tem, announced they were stepping down at the governor's request, the board voted 7-0 to name dairy farmer Craig Lang, of Brooklyn, Iowa, as board president. The board also voted 7-0 to name agribusiness leader Bruce Rastetter, the top donor to Branstad's campaign last year, the president pro tem.

Dodge City, Kansas, plans to build a $7 million facility for a large agricultural exhibition show that had previously been held in Garden City and Great Bend. The Western Kansas Manufacturers Association (WKMA) has hosted the 3i Show, a major ag-related trade expo, in Garden City and Great Bend in alternating years for nearly six decades. The three i’s in 3i Show stand for irrigation, implements and industry.

Heartland Grains and Milling, LLC, a manufacturer of poultry feeds, was acquired by Pacific Elements, LLC effective July 1, according to Pacific Elements, LLC, Director of Operations, Vince Cline. The two companies share the Heartland facilities in Ceres, California, where Pacific Elements, LLC is a major supplier of custom animal feed supplements for dairy, beef, poultry, pet and companion animals.

BOISE, Idaho –Under threat of a voter initiative, an Idaho cattle group says it supports legislation to punish third-time animal cruelty offenders with a felony. The Idaho Cattle Association's feeder council voted unanimously at a recent meeting to pursue the bill in 2012, according to the association's July newsletter.

LUBBOCK, Texas –The unrelenting Texas drought has produced a cruelly ironic twist: cattle dying from too much water. Agriculture officials in parched Texas said Wednesday there are no hard numbers on how many head of cattle have died but reports of deaths from too much water or too little are showing up across the nation's leading cattle production state.

MIAMI, Texas–A Beef Marketing and Risk Management meeting will be held July 25 at the Roberts County Emergency Service Building at 214 S. Main, Miami, according to a Texas AgriLife Extension Service agent.

It’s well-documented that calf preconditioning programs can help cow/calf producers boost their profitability on sale day ­— even to the tune of an extra $6.38 per cwt.Adding icing to the cake, calf preconditioning also has been shown to positively affect feeder calf performance.

The U.S. EPA AgSTAR Program is pleased to provide information on U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) Value-Added Producer Grant Program. Applications are being accepted for grants to provide economic assistance to independent producers, farmer and rancher cooperatives, and agricultural producer groups through the Value-Added Producer Grant Program. The grants may be used for feasibility studies or business plans, working capital for marketing value-added agricultural products, and for farm-based renewable energy projects, including anaerobic digester projects. Eligible applicants include independent producers, farmer and rancher cooperatives, and agricultural producer groups.