The Farmers’ Almanac says the “dog days” refer to what is often the hottest and most sultry time of summer, when lethargy and indolence tend to reign due to the heat. Time to find some shade and review dairy risk management programs and the July-August calendar.

Here’s something we haven’t seen in quite some time: Producer price differentials (PPDs) in all applicable Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMOs) were positive in June. Whether it lasts is yet to be determined.

Congress often completes its work for the year just before the holiday season – right at the last minute. 2020 was no exception to that rule, despite the unique circumstances wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to shape our nation in unprecedented ways.

A year ago, in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, leaders of Pennsylvania’s Center for Dairy Excellence (CDE) created a survey to determine what effect COVID-19 had on Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers and to get a snapshot of the dairy industry.

With the COVID-19 pandemic weighing heavily on the world economy and agriculture markets, David Kohl, professor emeritus of agricultural economics at Virginia Tech, recently shared how pandemic economics are impacting the U.S. dairy industry.

It’s no surprise the infusion of direct government payments to farmers helped many dairy operators weather the storm that was 2020. Those payments were necessary to help operators struggling with the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s not something you can build a plan around.

They say hindsight is 20/20, but the year 2020 contained anything but hindsight. Blindsided by what we now know as COVID-19, governments were forced to intervene in the form of financial and medical assistance.

Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMOs) were created in the mid-1930s to bring order to milk marketed in the U.S. At the time, milk was primarily consumed in fluid form, which is classified in FMMOs as Class I for pricing purposes. As recently as 1960, 65.4% of all milk priced through FMMOs was classified as Class I milk.