For the third time in less than 24 months, the board of directors of the National Dairy Producers Organization, Inc. (NDPO) is calling on every producer in the country who is producing milk that is being shipped to a class 3 or class 4 processor to reduce overall production by 5 percent (1 percent per month) as soon as possible.

Officials at Soybean & Corn Advisor Inc. have expressed concern that an early frost will harm late-planted corn in the nation’s corn belt. Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota may all be at risk as corn develops at a slower-than-normal rate, leaving the immature crop vulnerable to a September frost.

Kyle Parreira Technical Apprentice Fresno, California Conestoga-Rovers & Associates

On Sept. 12, the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) will be holding a hearing to consider the petition filed last month by California producer organizations. That petition, which used 2012 data, would have raised the Class 4b price by about $0.67 per hundredweight, or an increase of about $0.28 per hundredweight to the Overbase price.

Private-label products sporting the Real California Milk (RCM) seal are of concern to some New York dairy farmers. They worry that the California Milk Advisory Board's (CMAB) aggressive marketing campaign, combined with the lower price of California milk, could hurt their own chances of selling milk.

Prairie Farms Dairy, a farmer-owned cooperative headquartered in Carlinville, Illinois, now offers a line of Greek yogurt with seven flavors. According to a press release from the co-op, the new line was added in response to consumer demand for Greek yogurt, which now accounts for more than a third of the market.

Nicole Meagher Inside Sales Representative Fox Lake, Wisconsin ANIMART Inc.

Two U.S.-based animal nutrition and health companies — Vets Plus Inc. (VPI) and Ashish Life Science — have partnered to develop pharmaceutical formulations for veterinarian health. The collaboration is expected to result in multiple pharmaceuticals utilizing the strengths of each company’s existing research teams.

The Family Resiliency Center (FRC), the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the Dairy Research Institute (DRI), a non-profit research organization established by America’s dairy farmers, has formed a new partnership that aims to help fill critical research gaps in how healthy eating habits are formed from the earliest ages.

More than 120 professionals with a vested interest in milk quality recently attended the National Mastitis Council (NMC) regional meeting in Portland, Maine.