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The Rabobank 2016 Global Dairy Top 20 list is out, reflecting a challenging year for the world’s dairy giants. The biggest story isn’t so much the names on the list, but the bottom line on overall dairy sales and its impact.
Summertime means fair season in ag country, and with fair season comes the familiar waves of noise, the tantalizing smell of fair food, along with the not-so-tantalizing smell of the livestock barns, and blurred crowds of people.
The University of Georgia Dairy Science Club is raising money to start a retirement fund for Charisma, a 13-year-old cow in the university’s teaching dairy herd. The Washington State Dairy Federation disputes state water permit costs. Prairie Farms Dairy and the National Basketball Association’s Milwaukee Bucks will team up to sell milk at the Wisconsin State Fair. Richard Denier, retired general manager of World Wide Sires in Visalia, California, will receive the National Dairy Shrine’s highest honor. This and other U.S. region-by-region dairy news can be found here.
With the cattle market looking a little shaky, we’ve decided it’s time to look for additional sources of income. After scrolling through 95 infomercial channels in search of one TV show my husband and I could agree on, I have hit on the perfect solution: a week-long, fat-blaster workout called the Hay Hauler’s Shape-Up.
For the first time in more than a year, the top five dairy exporting countries/regions produced less combined milk than 12 months earlier. USDA’s June milk estimates showed relatively strong production, but there’s still hope milk prices can stabilize and improve. Dairy margins continued to strengthen over the first half of July. This and other U.S. dairy economic news can be found here.
Beef margins continued to decline over the first half of July, with weaker cattle prices more than offsetting the impact of lower feed costs, according to the latest CIH Margin Watch report from Commodity & Ingredient Hedging LLC.
With beef production up, cold storage inventories also rose. Total frozen beef stored in all warehouses as of June 30 was estimated at about 451.2 million pounds, according to USDA’s monthly Cold Storage report, released July 22. The total is up 1 percent from May 31, but down 5 percent from June a year earlier.
June 2016 beef production, at 2.19 billion pounds, was 10 percent above the previous year, according to USDA’s latest Livestock Slaughter report, issued July 21.
Cattle and calves on feed in U.S. feedlots with a capacity of 1,000 or more head totaled 10.4 million head on July 1, up about 1 percent compared to a year earlier.
