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Senior, St. John’s University
Intern at Minnesota Milk Producers Association
Based in Buffalo, Minnesota
Background
Q. In what area are you pursuing a degree?
I’m majoring in management with an emphasis on business administration and a minor in economics.
Q. What is your agricultural background?
I grew up working on North Oak Dairy, my family’s dairy farm in Freeport, Minnesota.
Junior, Cal Poly State University
Marketing Communications intern with Accelerated Genetics
Based in Baraboo, Wisconsin
Background
Q. In what area are you pursuing a degree?
I am a dairy science major and agricultural communications minor.
Q. What is your agricultural background?
Agriculture has always been an extremely important part of my family. We own and operate a dairy in Stevinson, California. Our lives revolve around that farm, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
Rube Goldberg was a noted cartoonist of the first half of the 20th Century. Among his many honors was a Pulitzer Prize for political satire. But we know him today not for his satire, but for a series of popular cartoons where he depicted complex ways to do simple things like wiping a window, teeing a ball without bending over and wiping the mouth with a napkin.
His graphic satires of the ever-growing use of “gadgets” in American life became so well known that in the 1930s Webster’s Dictionary added his name to its definitions. A Rube Goldberg contraption today means something that “accomplishes by extremely complex, roundabout means what seemingly could be done simply.”
The road to better marketing continues for Dave Geiser and Deb Reinhart of Gold Star Farms. After choosing a marketing consultant in November 2009, Dave and Deb began their journey. The destination: better control of their business through better marketing.
Travel log entry: May 2010. “We had hoped that milk prices would rally, but since they have not, we are controlling our destiny by making marketing decisions that meet our goals. That process is empowering and certainly puts us in a different place than we were months ago. The positive attitude it generates makes it easier to conduct business on a daily basis…”
To help manure handlers adopt new technologies and best management practices, Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences will host the 2010 Manure Expo, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on July 15 at the Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs. This annual event has been held for eight years, previously in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio and Iowa. Pennsylvania will host it for the first time this year, attracting a new audience from the Northeast.
The expo’s theme, “Balancing Production and Conservation,” addresses how manure handlers must navigate federal, state and local regulations, public perceptions and scrutiny, and economic pressures, while trying to make the most of an important natural resource, said Expo Coordinator Robert Meinen, senior extension associate for Penn State Cooperative Extension.
The expansion of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) is a controversial issue in many communities. Producers, residents and local decision-makers often clash over conflicting interests regarding new operations. Four researchers at Purdue University wanted to learn more about the nature of these local conflicts and the impacts of swine and dairy CAFOs on rural communities. The researchers went directly to the sources of information.
They conducted face-to-face interviews with 50 large swine and dairy CAFOs owners in central Indiana to learn more about them and their operations, collected tax records from the courthouse to analyze impacts on county budgets, examined environmental violations and interviewed public officials. What they found was that the impact of CAFOs in rural communities is a mixed bag.
Throughout high school and college it seemed like everyone I knew had a seasonal or part-time job working at a restaurant. I remember one really fun summer as a cook at my uncle’s restaurant. His managers typically only hired cute girls to work the “front of the house,” so I never made my way up near the customers.
However, I learned a lot of interesting things working in the bar and restaurant industry that summer. In fact, one of the lessons I learned was that it’s not politically correct to call waiters and waitresses by those titles. For those of you who haven’t already heard, the proper term these days is server.
At the Four-State Dairy Nutrition and Management Conference in Dubuque, Iowa in June, a four-member panel related what they did or recommended to be done throughout the last 18 months of low milk prices.
The lender
Gary Sipiorski, dairy development manager for Vita Plus Corporation in Madison, Wisconsin, said lenders are worried about cattle values, land values and regulators.
By now dairy producers and others have heard about or viewed the released video of animal abuse on an Ohio farm. Anyone who has seen it will agree the actions shown are intolerable. There is some debate floating around as to what the farm owner may have known or not known about the activities of the employees shown, but that is for others to determine.
What is important is what farmers learn about preventing this kind of incident on their own farms. What should be learned may be in two different avenues: livestock handling procedures and employment practices. The two are closely related because having the right employees who have positive attitudes about working with animals will help make the livestock handling procedures an easier issue to manage.
