In the news affecting a dairy producer's bottom line the first week of December 2025: Steps taken to urge dairy enforcement in upcoming USMCA review, Walmart opens milk processing facility in Georgia, a better outlook for the future pushes farmer sentiment higher, and the GDT index falls again.

During a producer roundtable at the National Mastitis Council annual meeting, Jan. 27-30, in Charlotte, North Carolina, three dairymen defined the ways they achieve low somatic cell counts (SCC) with farm protocols, training and implementing new technologies. 

Talk of growth, expansion and new opportunities have historically been quieter in the Southeast than in other regions, but Travis Senn, assistant director of milk marketing and analytics at Southeast Milk Inc. (SMI), says dairy farmers in this region are entering 2025 with a “level of confidence they haven’t had in years.”

New processing capacity in West Virginia and Georgia is bringing optimism to the dairy community in the Southeast. However, 2023 weakened the financial positions of many dairy producers across the region.

Georgia currently has two fluid milk processors in Atlanta and Lawrenceville. Those two processors only use a portion of the state's growing milk production.

Milk produced and marketed in the 11 states in the southeastern U.S. is pooled on the Appalachian, Southeast and Florida Federal Milk Marketing Orders (FMMOs).