Have a happy holiday season! What will be in your Christmas stocking? No coal, I hope. How about cheese, eggnog, butter and gift certificates for your favorite cheese pizza?

Navigating an uncertain marketplace can be more successful by implementing a variety of risk management strategies best suited for the individual dairy operation, three Pennsylvania dairy producers noted during the 11th annual Dairy Financial and Risk Management Conference, hosted by the Pennsylvania Center for Dairy Excellence.

Modern milk price risk management has been around for more than 20 years. As we have seen in 2020, with the impact of COVID-19 on the dairy market, milk price volatility is not going away.

The milk-price risk management landscape has changed immensely over the last few years. This article takes a brief look at available programs and highlights what to consider when evaluating how to manage that risk.

As a dairy business consultant, I’m frequently asked two questions: 1) With components contributing most of the pay price, and the high cost of trucking and marketing milk, should I be focusing more on components and less on volume? and 2) We are good at enhancing butterfat and protein tests by manipulating the lysine-to-methionine ratios in the diets, but does it pay to do so when milk prices are low?

When I go from my home in Minnesota to Ames, Iowa, for business meetings, Interstate 35 is a good road to take. When I go to the Black Hills of South Dakota for vacation, however, taking I-35 would be a terrible choice. Driving all day on I-35 would leave me farther away from the Black Hills than when I started.

My husband and I officially bought the cows three years ago. We’ve been learning together, working together and making the farm ours, slowly but surely. We took over the farm in the middle of a long downturn of the industry, and Michigan (where we live) was hit especially hard. We joked about why would we want to start farming in good times? Our mantra has been, “If we can make it through this, we can make it through anything.”