You’re busy – milking cows, managing employees and hoping to get some hay made. With that in mind, Progressive Dairyman looks at issues in the news impacting you and your dairy business. In recognition of your time, we’ll attempt to summarize recent events or actions making dairy headlines and reported in our weekly digital newsletter, Progressive Dairyman Extra. Then, we’ll try to put that news into perspective and briefly describe how it might affect you.

U.S. milk quality – measured in terms of somatic cell counts (SCC) – improved again in 2018, based on an annual summary of Dairy Herd Improvement (DHI) test-day results.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comments from leaders of U.S. dairy organizations. The USDA will roll out another three-pronged aid package aimed at helping U.S. farmers suffering financial damages due to ongoing trade disputes. Details regarding direct payments to dairy producers have yet to be released.

Heavy cow culling continued to keep the lid on milk production growth in April. Monthly year-over-year output has now been up less than 1 percent in six of the past seventh months, with March 2019 production lower than the year before.

Digest Highlights

• Timeline set for RFID traceability program
• Global Dairy Trade index lower
• Dairy margins start May mixed
• Dairy-RP indemnity payment update
• Four things to know about the new Dairy Margin Coverage program
• CDI completes purchase of Hilmar milk powder facility
• Streamlined water-quality credit clearinghouse advances in Wisconsin
• SoCalGas dairy biomethane projects approved
• NMPF urges EU trade retaliation
• Beverage choices changing with McDonald’s Happy Meals
• Cornell designing milk container of the future
• Property taxes: How are yours calculated?

Rollbacks on U.S. import tariffs on aluminum and steel from Mexico and Canada could bolster exports of U.S. dairy products, while also smoothing the road for ratification of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA).

About 26,000 U.S. dairy farmers will split approximately $26 million in a settlement agreement reached in a decade-long lawsuit over misreporting of nonfat dry milk prices that negatively affected the milk prices they received.

The confounding case(s) of milk supply management in a litigious society continues.

The last few years have proven rough for even the most efficient dairy farms. Seeking federal policy changes to address those financial struggles, hundreds of dairy producers gathered over the last few months at events organized by the National Farmers Organization (NFO) and Wisconsin Farmers Union (WFU), dubbed the Dairy Together Road Show.

Digest Highlights

• Dairy-RP indemnity payments beginning
• Interest rate movement mixed
• Beef, dairy collaboration launches HOLSim program
• New publication provides snapshot of LLCs for Midwest farming businesses
• FFAR grant funds dairy cow heat stress research
• Cargill conducts voluntary recall of select Southern States feed products