Industry News

Digest Highlights

• CDI buying Hilmar Cheese Company milk powder facility
• Some lawmakers want dairy terms allowed on plant-based products
• Plant-based group offers FDA comment analysis
• PFAS Detection Act introduced
• House version of Chapter 12 bankruptcy reform bill introduced
• Wisconsin DBA sets legislative priorities
• California exploring opportunities to ‘export’ manure
• IDF global dairy animal welfare standards updated

Heavy culling and weaker milk output per cow pushed March 2019 U.S. milk production below year-ago levels.

While legislative and administrative efforts seek to expand dairy options in school lunchrooms, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA) likely provide a key avenue to get whole milk back into schools.

Strengthening cheese prices have been helping boost U.S. dairy farmer milk prices, and at least part of that support can be attributed to stronger cheese export sales, based on latest estimates from the USDA and U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC). Also, the U.S. International Trade Commission estimates small gains in market access for the U.S. dairy sector as a result of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

You’re busy – milking cows, managing employees and making 2019 cropping preparations. With that in mind, Progressive Dairyman looks at issues in the news impacting you and your dairy business.

Even though the 2018 Farm Bill provided dairy safety net program changes for the next five years, Congress will debate issues directly impacting dairy farmers. Immigration, trade and environmental policies are chief among those, and grassroots efforts are already underway to reform other dairy policies. The New Green Deal looms.