The Food & Drug Administration posted changes to the Pasteurized Milk Ordinance. USDA approved use of dairy checkoff funds in Cuba. The American Farm Bureau urged clarity on Internet sales taxes to protect rural merchants. This and other U.S. dairy policy news can be found here.

USDA’s monthly Ag Prices report is released, providing an overview of milk, feed and dairy cows prices. This and other U.S. dairy economic news can be found here.

February 2016 milk prices fell, but lower feed prices kept U.S. average income margins above Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) indemnity payment trigger levels.

In 2012, the average age of a farmer was 58.3 years old, continuing a 30-year trend of an increasingly older demographic in agriculture. Recognizing the need to support young farmers, the latest Thank You Farmers initiative from Culver’s encourages franchisees and the Culver’s Support Center in Prairie Du Sac, Wisconsin, to sponsor the cost of purchasing FFA jackets for members who otherwise wouldn’t be able to own this special attire.

Dairying in the West has its own set of advantages and disadvantages, and Steve Maddox shared those as he spoke to more than 450 dairy industry enthusiasts at the Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference held in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, earlier this year.

I was stuck. My family was gone. I was 20 hours from home in teeny-tiny Kirksville, Missouri, and day one of college classes started the next day. It wasn’t the first time I’d been away from home, nor was it the first time I’d moved. Between summer camps and my family moving from California to Connecticut when I was 10, being away from home and moving were not foreign concepts to me.