Dairy producers and industry professionals traveling to the Western Dairy Management Conference were greeted with a familiar sight – a snowy arrival into Reno, Nevada. Despite the weather’s early April Fools' joke, the networking opportunities and variety of presentation topics provided something for each of the more than 1,100 registered attendees to enjoy.

With a theme of “Dialing It In,” the 2025 Professional Dairy Producers (PDP) Business Conference drew inspiration from the steady movement of a sundial to encourage dairy producers to align their efforts with purpose and intention. In the opening session, three experts in the fields of geopolitics, markets and weather joined together to help dairy producers see the forces behind the unpredictable parts of agriculture.

At Penn State Extension’s Women in Dairy Conference held on Nov. 19, Joanna Shipp, a seventh-generation dairy farmer from Virginia and chair of the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board, reflected on what the next 20 years of dairy could look like in the U.S.

HPAI has left the dairy industry scrambling for treatment, fast-tracking vaccines, developing containment strategies, implementing biosecurity protocols and reassuring the public that dairy products are not the source of a potential foodborne public health crisis. 

Sparkling new farm equipment, the latest agriculture technology and a plethora of educational seminars were just a few of the many attractions for the 100,000-plus attendees at the 2025 World Ag Expo, held Feb. 11-13 in Tulare, California.

Academia, industry allies and dairy producers each brought unique perspectives for how to best manage dairy waste at the 2025 Midwest Manure Summit Feb. 26 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. From anaerobic digesters to in-season applications to fiber bedding and more, manure has gone from a waste to a valuable resource on dairy farms of all sizes, as highlighted during the one-day event.

In mid-July 2024, a team of extension staff, farmers, manure applicators and agency staff from New York and Vermont partnered with Annex Media and the North American Manure Expo (NAME) Board to bring NAME to central New York.

As the conversation around carbon continues to evolve, the Professional Dairy Producers (PDP) held the Carbon Conference 3.0 in Madison, Wisconsin, at the end of January to inform dairy producers and allied industry of current strategies to turn carbon challenges into business opportunities.