While the revelation Dean Foods would terminate dairy farmer milk marketing contracts in a number of states was another dark cloud, not all the news related to milk processing capacity was bad this week.

The challenge of finding and keeping affordable health insurance isn’t new for farm families. Cooperative Network, a trade association serving co-ops in Wisconsin and Minnesota, heard the groundswell of member concerns at the turn of the last century.

The March 12, 2018, issue of Progressive Dairyman features our annual regional snapshots of “the state of dairy” around the U.S. Expanded previews for individual regions are highlighted in this online series.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with information from Pennsylvania. Another round of letters notifying dairy farmers they are losing a milk market arrived in mailboxes, this time in Indiana, Kentucky and surrounding states. In a letter dated Feb. 26, Brent Bunce, director of Dairy Direct Operations, said Dean Foods would cease buying milk from affected dairy farmers, effective May 31.

Where does your state rank in national hay prices? With U.S. average hay prices ending 2016 at 70-month lows, presumably there was nowhere to go but up. However, it took until spring for prices to thaw out.

Digest Highlights: Dean plans further consolidation. Foremost Farms’ Michigan plant gains initial bond approval. Find a summary of this and other news here.

McDonald’s announcement it would remove chocolate milk and cheeseburgers from its popular Happy Meal menu drew concern and social media traffic from dairy farmers who have helped finance a long-standing partnership between the restaurant chain and Dairy Management Inc. (DMI) through their checkoff dollars. According to DMI Chief Executive Officer Tom Gallagher, the 9-year-old DMI/McDonald’s partnership remains strong, and DMI is working with McDonald’s to get reformulated chocolate milk back as a menu feature.

The reopening of enrollment for 2018 participation in the Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) took on additional urgency with the release of milk price and feed cost information for January. Meanwhile, dairy cows culled in January 2018 were the highest monthly total in five years.

The March 12, 2018, issue of Progressive Dairyman features our annual regional snapshots of “the state of dairy” around the U.S. Expanded reports for individual regions are highlighted in this online series.

Health insurance availability and affordability for individual dairy farm families and their employees has changed dramatically over the past few years, according to Paul Kulpa, vice president of market and product strategy with Agri-Services Agency. Ongoing federal health care reforms mean the situation remains in flux.