HOW WE MET: I met Mike on a flight from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was on his way to his nephew’s wedding there. Mike’s extended family owns a landscape business near the Hallmark Meat Packing plant that was the subject of an undercover video release in 2008 by HSUS. The video showed slaughterhouse workers mistreating culled dairy cows. Mike told me he knows animals are treated much better on-farm than the video depicted and that he doesn’t sympathize with the efforts of HSUS and others to convince consumers otherwise.

I accidentally stumbled upon Kirk Kardashian’s first-ever book early this fall. I read the advanced copy his publisher sent me and interviewed him shortly after the book’s release date. Click here to view my one-on-one with him. In summary, the Vermont-native’s manuscript is the best compilation of all of the gripes I’ve ever heard from dairy producers about why their industry is perpetually plagued by squeezed margins. Its throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it approach is aided by Kardashian’s careful research into the historical context for how current industry scapegoats – such as sexed semen, ethanol, dairy policy and Federal Milk Marketing Orders – have, over time, impacted the difference between what it costs a farmer to produce milk and what he or she gets paid for it. From beginning to end, the book portrays a milk margin that has been squeezed thin and is perpetually getting thinner.

Progressive Dairyman compiled the map below using installation data from robotic milking companies highlighted below. States with at least one robotic milking installation of any kind are shaded in purple. The next most likely states to see a robotic milking installation, according to the contributing companies, are shaded in light purple.