When I meet readers in person, they often ask me: “What are you seeing out there? What’s new?” One of the things I’m seeing frequently is an emphasis on training and employee development.

We wax poetic about dairy farming – it’s among the most iconic images of life in North America. But let’s not kid ourselves: it is a business. Complex. Unlike other businesses, it’s a 24-hour-a-day exercise in precision and intelligence. Technology solutions have become commonplace to help identify and control those variables, but the “intelligence” from these solutions is often not able to drive a corresponding reaction until hours or days later. And the person collecting the data often has to interpret the data on their own by comparing numerous different spreadsheets.

Elanco Animal Health is ”exploring strategic options” for Posilac, including seeking a buyer for the recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) molecule and its manufacturing facility located in Augusta, Georgia.

For more than a century, on behalf of dairy farmers and the dairy community, the National Dairy Council (NDC) has been committed to nutrition research and education. It has supported groundbreaking scientific research, including E.V. McCollum’s, who first made the scientific connection between dairy foods and good health in 1917.

Your local dairy promotion organizations also develop important partnerships that advance dairy farmers’ interests and help consumers live healthier lives:

Back where it all began, the 2017 North American Manure Expo was held Aug. 22-23 at the University of Wisconsin Agricultural Research Station in Arlington, Wisconsin.

Ask any dairy producer about their greatest concerns for the future and, within minutes, the topic of labor will be mentioned. For U.S. dairymen, the issue of immigration will likely come within the same breath.

The world of business continues to change and evolve at a tremendous pace. The workplace and workforce has changed significantly, especially in the last 10 years. The practice of management, however, has been frozen in time for more than 30 years.

Does a manager manage? You are probably thinking, “Bob, what a stupid question. Of course that is what a manager does.” Actually, I will argue in this article that the answer is “yes and no.”