As America’s dairy farmers endure the lowest milk prices since the Great Recession of 2009, the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) today asked the USDA to provide a measure of relief by purchasing at least $100 million worth of cheese products for donation to the needy – a measure that would help both farmers and food insecure Americans who patronize food banks.

USDA’s June 2016 monthly milk cost of production report showed higher feed prices offset a small increase in milk prices, but that situation improved somewhat in July. Find these and other numbers impacting dairy.

U.S. dairy product exporters shipped 161,882 tons of milk powders, cheese, butterfat, whey and lactose in June, up 5 percent from a year ago and the highest volume since May 2015, according to Alan Levitt of the U.S. Dairy Export Council. Gains were led by record shipments of whey protein concentrate (WPC), offsetting declines in all the other major categories.

With a turnover rate of about one-third of the U.S. dairy herd annually, dairy records can help identify reasons why cows leave the milking herd. The Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding (CDCB) provides one such snapshot of why cows leave Dairy Herd Improvement (DHI) herds.

Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa dairy producers will receive about half the Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) indemnity money paid out for the May-June period, according to a state-by-state list released by USDA.

U.S. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced the “Commodity Checkoff Program Improvement Act of 2016” (S. 3201), a bill they say will bring transparency and accountability to national commodity checkoff programs.

A coalition of individuals and organizations, under the banner of the Partnership for a New American Economy (PNAE), have set their sites on 2017 for immigration reform.

In 2015, U.S. per capita meat consumption took its largest annual jump since the 1970s, up 5 percent. However, with flat sales resulting from tight supplies and retail price peaks, beef didn’t capture its share of that growth, according to a new report from the Rabobank Food & Agribusiness Research and Advisory group.