When the U.S. departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services released the 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGAs) in January, it was clear: Dairy remains an important part of the dietary recommendations.

Local dairy checkoff staffs are taking a proactive, comprehensive, integrated approach to sharing results, highlighting the dairy recommendations with health and wellness partners, industry leaders and other marketplace partners. Here are some examples:

The 2016 Great Lakes Regional Dairy Conference attracted more than 450 dairy industry enthusiasts to Mount Pleasant, Michigan, on Feb. 4-6 to hear about the global dairy market and learn from other dairy producers on various topics vital to production and profitability.

Editor’s note: This is the last of four articles explaining producer payment systems for milk in the U.S. California produces a little more than 20 percent of U.S. milk and has its own unique payment system for paying producers for it. As mentioned in previous articles in this series, the three Federal Milk Marketing Order payment systems in the U.S. are very similar:

In Purity and Danger, a classic book on social anthropology published in 1963, Mary Douglas points out how distinctions in many societies between “clean” and “unclean” are really about what is considered out of place. And these boundaries – like borders between countries – can be quite arbitrary.

Are dairy managers more likely to ask how they can improve as a boss or how they can find better employees? My experience suggests that dairy farm managers are more likely to focus on finding employees. The question reminds me of a recent visit I had with a dairy farm manager.

David Pelzer has served dairy farmers as a promotion and checkoff staff member since 1993. During his 20-plus-year career in dairy promotion, he’s worked with hundreds of dairy farmer board members and enacted programs that drive confidence in and consumption of dairy products.

There’s something farmers do when watching a weather forecast prior to chopping hay. It’s the same thing that’s done before an alfalfa or corn variety gets chosen – or a hand is revealed in a game of poker.

The day after Christmas, the aptly named winter storm Goliath blew its way through the Southern Plains states. The snow and 80-mph wind ravaged dairy country in Texas and New Mexico. Like winter storm Atlas two years ago, this storm hit the agricultural community hard.

World The globe was awash in milk in 2015 as the EU removed its milk quota production restrictions and major dairy buyers remained on the sidelines. As a result of oversupply and low international prices, U.S. milk had a harder time moving into global markets.