Rabobank’s Dairy Quarterly Q1 Report provides a current snapshot of seven major dairy regions of the world, as well as things to watch for in the second and third quarters of 2018.

Some dairy producers could see total 2018 Margin Protection Program for Dairy (MPP-Dairy) premium payments recouped within two months.

U.S. milk production posted a more modest 1.3 percent year-over-year increase in March, but the subplot in the story was the USDA’s reduction in cow numbers and milk production retroactively to the start of the year.

Editor’s note: A version of this article also appeared in Holistic Management International’s In Practice magazine.

Aldo Leopold is one of my favorite ecological thinkers. Leopold was an internationally recognized ecologist and conservationist who lived and worked all over the world, but whose work was particularly inspired by the landscape of the farm he owned along the Wisconsin River. Although I grew up in the corn country of central Illinois, I was drawn as a young adult to this landscape and have made Wisconsin my home for going on 40 years.

Being the first farmer in New Jersey to begin bottling fluid milk for direct sales, bringing jugging back to the state after a decade-long absence, is quite the accomplishment for young dairy farmer Jared Weeks. Weeks, along with his wife, Treacy, owns Hun-Val Dairy in Hunterdon County. The dairy began bottling their own fluid milk in 2015 and expanded into ice cream, exclusively made with milk from their herd.

Matt Utt has been leading research projects at Select Sires for the past several years. He was recently promoted to a newly created position to analyze data and find new, beneficial uses for it.