After 18 years, the Central Washington Dairy Management Conference (CWDMC) will no longer be offered. Volunteer conference organizers made the decision recently, citing poor producer attendance as their main concern.

Progressive Dairyman teamed up with Professional Dairy Producers of Wisconsin to bring the 2008 Nutrient Innovation & Technology Tours. Dairymen and industry representatives spent three days driving throughout Wisconsin looking at the latest innovations and solutions to manure management systems.

“We need to preserve our social license to produce food. It’s a reality we all have to face and deal with,” says Logan Bower, who hosted the Dairy Animal Care and Quality Assurance (DACQA) producer certification “preview” October 15 at his 500-cow dairy in Blain, Perry County, Pennsylvania. Long before the undercover HSUS videos depicted mistreatment of “downer” dairy cows at a beef plant and auction barns, a producer-led effort – the National Dairy Animal Well-Being Initiative (NDAWI) – was already underway, working to develop its recently finalized principles and guidelines.

Over the course of more than two decades, the Penn State Dairy Science Club has continued to improve upon their annual consignment sale, the Nittany Lion Fall Classic.

Dairy producers and industry representatives from around the globe will converge on Madison, Wisconsin, when World Dairy Expo takes place September 30 – October 4. It is, after all, where the dairy industry meets.

The “best and brightest” students from universities in the Southwest region spent the first half of their summer vacation in Clovis, New Mexico. Eighteen students participated in the first-ever Advanced Large Herd Management program, which ran from May 19 to June 27.

Dairy producers and industry professionals boarded buses July 10 and 11 to see first-hand the growth and innovation taking place in the booming I-29 corridor.

Almost 100 dairy producers and industry representatives participated in the Minnesota Milk Producers’ second annual Summer Bus Tour, held in mid-June. The two-day tour covered five dairies in western Wisconsin and was sponsored in part by the University of Minnesota Extension.

More than 110 representatives from 19 different countries accepted an invitation from Lallemand Animal Nutrition to attend the company’s nutrition symposium and dairy tours in Edinburgh, Scotland, in June.

The 12th annual Distillers Grains Symposium, hosted by the Distillers Grains Technology Council, was held May 21-22, 2008, in Kansas City, Missouri.