FYI on Dairy

Americans are currently embracing a strange sort of primitivism. Bicycles are losing gears, runners are afoot in shoes designed to create a barefoot sensation (some are even running barefoot), and men are growing bushy Will Oldham-like beards. It’s all very curious and entertaining.

Social media is all about building relationships, a key
component in Ohio Farm Bureau’s mission to create a
partnership between farmers and consumers.

"Homegrown" follows the Dervaes family who run a small organic farm in the heart of urban Pasadena, California. While “living off the grid”, they harvest over 6,000 pounds of produce on less than a quarter of an acre, make their own bio diesel, power their computers with the help of solar panels, and maintain a website that gets 4,000 hits a day. The film is an intimate human portrait of what it’s like to live like “Little House on the Prairie” in the 21st Century.

Cattle producers are trying to educate Congress about the use of antibiotics in the beef industry.

Michael Apley, a Kansas State University veterinary clinical pharmacologist, recently went to Washington, D.C., with National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) representatives to address the issue.

TRENDS: The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association reported that organic beef sales had a steady rise and peaked in the 2008 recession, and have again rebounded, hitting levels at 14 percent higher at mid-2009 than they were a couple of years previous. One farmer noted that people buying her grass-fed beef weren’t “elite,” nor buying it because of health scares. Rather, it appears many buyers were middle and lower class, and just wanted to be ecologically responsible.

Technology will play a big role in almost every dairy business in the next five to 10 years, but technology adoption comes with both benefits and risks. To help producers understand these benefits and risks, Penn State Dairy Alliance is offering a series of dairy technology conferences at sites across Pennsylvania, starting in February.

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Transcript of Secretary Vilsack remarks at USDA Outlook Conference, Feb 18, 2010

The trip to San Antonio, Texas for the Cattle Industry Annual Convention was extremely valuable, providing many chances to catch up and gain new perspectives. On this page are several important sessions to share with your staff and business partners.

For every tonne of chemical effluents that factories dump into China’s rivers and lakes, a comparable amount of harmful waste finds its way into this country’s water bodies from green fields and farmhouses.

With recent national media reports painting grim pictures of the dairy industry and the use of antibiotics in farm animals, it seems the agriculture community has become a serious target in media circles run by the likes of CBS Evening News Correspondent Katie Couric. And whether we like it or not, Couric is a 
strong voice in millions of family homes across the United States, 
unfortunately she is sure to make an impact on consumers choices.

Are the American farmers heading towards the same fate as America’s auto industry?