At Ag Media Summit, held August 5-7 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Livestock Publications Council (LPC) awarded the Progressive Dairyman team with first-place honors in its annual contest for top non-association publication. This marks the second consecutive year the magazine has beaten out competition from other livestock and ag publications to win the award. “Ever since I came to Progressive Dairyman more than six years ago, we've had a fun ride," says Managing Editor Walt Cooley. "We're celebrating the two-peat, but we also continue to strive for to be worthy of a three-peat."

Due to the economic and social situation that our industry faces and to our active participation with PeopleFirst, today we receive many comments and questions about the challenge of developing, maintaining and retaining a solid workforce. We know this is not easy to achieve, but it isn’t an impossible task either. The first step that we can take to pull together a solid workforce is to obtain commitment from the employees within our operation. In this article we would like to express and describe a series of answers to questions that we constantly hear regarding what employee engagement is and how it influences the success of the farm.

World Dairy Expo has unveiled a new dairy cattle entry system that is now available to exhibitors wishing to make entries to this year’s show. The new program utilizes the latest online registration technology while maintaining an easy-to-use and exhibitor-friendly system. Click here to access the online entry system and the 2012 Premium Book and all accompanying forms on the Dairy Cattle Show & Sales page.

Cooperative Resources International (CRI) of Shawano, Wisconsin, and Reproducción Animal S.A. de C.V. (RASA) of Tlalnepantla, Mexico, have agreed in principal on the sale of RASA to CRI. Management staff from both organizations are finalizing business plans with an expected transition date of Jan. 1, 2013. RASA has had a long working relationship with CRI. The organization has been the exclusive distributor of CRI bovine genetics throughout Mexico for the past 40 years.

Last week, USDA officials released their latest agricultural supply and demand and crop production estimates. In the August World Agricultural Supply and Demand (WASDE) report, USDA forecasted an average U.S. corn yield of 123.4 bushels per acre – 22.6 fewer bushels than July’s estimate and 23.8 bushels below last year. The corn harvested acreage estimate was 87.4 million acres, 3.4 million acres more than last year. The reduction in yields resulted in a total U.S. corn production forecast of 10.8 billion bushels, the smallest since 2006.

In a significant victory for dairy farmers involved in a national class action lawsuit accusing DairyAmerica, Inc., and California Dairies, Inc., of artificially depressing the price of milk products, a federal appeals court last week reversed a lower court’s dismissal of the case. The case – Gerald Carlin v. DairyAmerica and California Dairies, Inc. – claims that the nation’s largest marketer of nonfat dry milk and the California-based milk processing firm inflated their own profits at the expense of America’s dairy farmers by misreporting critical data used by the government to set raw milk prices. The dairy farmer plaintiffs seek compensation for the millions of dollars lost due to this alleged price manipulation.

Scott Bennett Grand Ronde, Oregon Territory Development Specialist CRV

Researchers in the Milk Quality Improvement Program at Cornell's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences have identified the predominant spore-forming bacteria in milk and their unique enzyme activity, knowledge that can now be used to protect the quality and shelf life of dairy products. The study – published in the March issue of Applied Environmental Microbiology by the lab of Wiedmann and Kathryn Boor, the Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences – identified the predominant strains of spore-forming bacteria, which can foul milk and other food products.