dairy farm

The 2014 farm law created a new, insurance-style support program for dairy farmers, based on the difference between milk prices and the cost of feed for milk cows, a so-called margin protection program.

Five weeks after reports that construction was underway for the world's largest dairy farm in northeastern China, a Dutch multimillionaire says he will build the world's largest dairy farm in southern Brazil.

Wisconsin dairy farmer Charlie Jones says milk prices have fallen by 30 percent this year, putting farmers like him in a bind.

Children who live on farms with dairy cows run one-tenth the risk of developing allergies as other rural children, say researchers at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden. Allergy rates have climbed in recent decades and one frequent explanation is that children are exposed to fewer micro-organism and have fewer infections than in the past, so their immune systems do not develop resistance.

Dairy farmers in Argentina are forecast to slash milk production by 9 percent this year, the largest cutback among the major dairy-exporting nations, says the USDA in a semi-annual report. The Dairy: World Markets and Trade report sees an overall drop in production of 1 percent by the five …

The largest farm group in North Dakota will decide next week whether to seek a statewide referendum against the so-called ham-and-cheese exemptions to a state law against corporate farming, says the Associated Press.

California is the No. 1 dairy state, but the popularity of Greek-style yogurt has turned New York into the top state for yogurt production, with more than 40 producers including Chobani, says the Los Angeles Times.

Tests of milk from 2,000 dairy farms found almost all the samples -- more than 99 percent -- were free of drug residues, said the FDA in a constituent update.

Consumer demand for organic milk continues to grow. Annual sales growth is "still in the high single digits," write USDA economists Catherine Greene and William McBride in Choices, the agricultural economics journal.

Snowville Creamery is a small operation with big ideas and run by a career dairyman, says Civil Eats. Says owner Warren Taylor, “I built a creamery to prove that we can produce good high quality, good tasting milk for everybody in America.”

While California dairy farms cope with a three-year drought, "states like Nebraska, Kansas and Iowa are pitching themselves as a dairy heaven," says Harvest Public Media.

More than 23,000 dairy producers - over half of the dairy operations in the country - enrolled in the new Margin Protection Program, created by the 2014 farm law as a replacement to the previous dairy subsidies, said USDA.

Sixty years after the Double T dairy farm went into business in California's Central Valley, owner Tony Azevedo sold his cattle, partly due to unrelenting drought and partly out of frustration over disagreements with his son on transfer of the business to a new generation.

Milk production at the average U.S. dairy farm could fall by as much as 1.4 percent due to the addition heat stress on dairy cows from global warming in 2030 when temperatures could be 2 degrees Fahrenheit higher, says an Agriculture Department study.

The government announced a new approach to supporting dairy farmers, with enrollment to begin on Tuesday and conclude on Nov 28.

Dairy farmers, short on labor, are adopting the use of robotic milking stations that allow the cows to decide when it's milking time, instead of the two or three mass sessions that have been common for decades, says the New York Times.