Dairy producers hoping for a year-end price rally didn’t have much to cheer about as the 2017 calendar turned to the last page. Meanwhile, the USDA updated milk prices, feed costs and income margins from October.

Digest Highlights: Federal order Class I proposal analyzed. NAFTA outlook shared. New rules affecting dairy coming to Texas, Ohio. Find a summary of these and other news here.

Editor's note: While this article seeks to explain different options to protect milk prices and income margins, it's imperative you talk to professional milk marketers and insurance agents before making risk management decisions.

This month’s VAS DC305 tip is on parlor performance. Using the parlor performance reports in DC305 can help you take advantage of the benefits of daily milk meters, plus look for cows that fail to produce the expected amount of milk. This data will help you:

Dairy farmers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have a new date – Jan. 22, 2018 – before air emission reporting requirements related to manure could go into effect. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia granted EPA’s motion for a stay of an earlier court ruling, pushing the reporting requirement back at least 60 days.

Digest Highlights: Livestock and other ag haulers receive 90-day waiver on ELD rule. WOTUS rule delay proposed. California QIP referendum extended. Find a summary of these and other news here.

Everyone dreams about their life as a movie, right? Well, perhaps everyone except most dairy farmers, who usually would prefer to remain unnoticed and not concerned with telling everyone about how well we do our jobs.

The involvement of women in agriculture isn’t new. It has probably occurred since the beginning of food cultivation. “What is new, though, is how we recognize and appreciate women’s contributions,” Krysta Harden said at the Advancing Women Conference West in Calgary, Alberta, in March.

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) board endorsed a proposal to change how federal milk marketing order (FMMO) Class I base prices are calculated. The proposal will be one element of a larger package of risk management improvements that NMPF will ask Congress to approve as the House and Senate agriculture committees begin to formulate the 2018 Farm Bill.

October 2017 U.S. milk production grew 1.4 percent compared with the same month a year earlier, picking up the pace after slowing somewhat in September, according to the USDA’s latest Milk Production report.