2019 | May 17 GMP E Newsletter
Georgia Milk Producers Weekly Enews
Ballots for Georgia Milk Producers Must Be Postmarked by May 30!
Dairy farmers should have received their ballots for the Georgia Milk Producers' Referendum by now. Please take a moment to participate and vote "YES" to keep us working for Georgia's dairy industry! We believe that the investment made by each dairyman into our organization has been beneficial for their businesses. If your farm hasn't received a ballot, please contact Andy Harrison at (404) 710-1196. Ballots must be postmarked by May 30 to be eligible.
U.S. Reaches Deal With Canada, Mexico To Immediately Lift Metals Tariffs - MBS Trade Alert
The U.S., Canada and Mexico have reached an agreement to remove President Donald Trump's tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, a yearlong standoff that posed complications to reaching a new North American trade deal. The agreement lifts the 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump discussed the deal by phone today. The tariffs will be gone in 48 hours, a senior official said. Additionally, the development does not involve quotas. 

A Canadian official said talks between Canada and the U.S. had moved forward and a deal could be announced as early as Friday afternoon.  Read more here>>>
Final settlement agreement approved in DairyAmerica lawsuit By Progressive Dairyman Editor Dave Natzke
About 26,000 U.S. dairy farmers will split approximately $26 million in a settlement agreement reached in a decade-long lawsuit over misreporting of nonfat dry milk prices that negatively affected the milk prices they received.

On May 8, 2019, the U.S. District Court Eastern District of California approved a $40 million settlement agreement regarding the lawsuit, Carlin, et al. v. DairyAmerica Inc., et al, case number 1:09-cv-00430-AWI-EPG. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2009 and, prior to the settlement, faced the potential of several more years of hearings, according to court documents.  
Dallas-Based Dean Foods Aims To Survive In A Dwindling Milk Market By Justin Martin, Kera News
The country's biggest milk-maker is based in Dallas, and business at Dean Foods has, well, soured.  First-quarter sales were down , and milk consumption in general is declining. Meanwhile, Dean faces more competition for milk production.

Heather Haddon  is a food retail and policy reporter with The Wall Street Journal and has been covering  Dean Foods . She talked with KERA's Justin Martin about the business of milk.
On the state of Dean's milk business:
The milk that you're buying in a gallon at the grocery store,  that has been declining for many, many years now . That's a result of more competition, there are more types of beverages these days, like plant-based beverages such as soy and almond and oat.

And there's a shift away from milk more generally. The broader population is not drinking milk with dinner at night, for example.
Dean really has made milk their specialty over the years. Dean was formed through merging many different regional milk plants all over the country into one company that was really a specialty in fluid milk. So when times were better for fluid milk, that was good. When times got tougher, that really made it difficult for them.  Full Story Here >>>
Trump says U.S. farmers to get $15 billion in aid amid China trade war - From Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Monday that his administration was planning to provide about $15 billion in aid to help U.S. farmers whose products may be targeted with tariffs by China in a deepening trade war.

“We’re going to take the highest year, the biggest purchase that China has ever made with our farmers, which is about $15 billion, and do something reciprocal to our farmers so our farmers can do well,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

He did not provide more details on what kind of an aid package it would be.
American farmers, a key constituency of Trump, have been among the hardest hit in the trade war. Soybeans are the most valuable U.S. farm export, and shipments to China dropped to a 16-year low in 2018. Sales of U.S. soybeans elsewhere failed to make up for the loss. U.S. soybean futures fell to their lowest in a decade on Monday.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said on Friday that Trump had asked him to create a plan to help American farmers cope with the heavy impact of the U.S.-China trade war on agriculture.

A new aid program would be the second round of assistance for farmers, after the Department of Agriculture’s $12 billion plan last year to compensate for lower prices for farm goods and lost sales stemming from trade disputes with China and other nations.
Ag Industry Pushes for Changes To 2019 Tariff Aid
From ANNA-LISA LACA , MilkBusiness
While few details are available about the aid promised to farmers by President Trump as a result of the escalating trade tensions, this week Secretary Perdue acknowledged the USDA is working on developing the plan. Agriculture industry lobbyists want to see changes made to the previous Market Facilitation Program. 

How payments are calculated. Currently, MFP payments are based on a producer’s recent history of acres planted or prevented from being planted. Industry experts would like to see the formula be based on the higher of actual yields, the APH of the farmer under crop insurance, or the yields used under PLC.
 
“A different approach to MFP — one based on historical plantings — would help address this issue while also avoiding delays in the MFP,” Pro Farmer’s Jim Wiesemeyer says. “Some in the ag sector say this should also be applied with respect to the 2018 MFP.”
Interested in robots? Quiz Facebook
By Mark Rodgers, Georgia dairy farmer, Hoard's Dairyman
When we started thinking about robotic milking, I had to look outside our region of the U.S. for ideas. We didn’t know of any robotic milking units in the Gulf Coast or Southeastern states, so we toured robot dairies in Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The farmers who allowed us to visit were great, and we learned a lot.

One young farmer suggested I follow a robotic milking group on Facebook. He told me it was a farmer-helping-farmer page, and the advice he received there had been helpful. My new friend said there was always some dairy farmer awake somewhere around the globe who would make a suggestion on how to correct a problem or question he might have with his robotic milker. If he had a breakdown at 2 a.m. and posed a question on this group’s page, he often got advice on how to repair it fairly quickly.
New Trump Immigration Plan Would Overhaul Green Card System - From Associated Press , Dairy Herd Management
Setting aside some of his hard-line rhetoric on illegal immigration, President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wanted to recruit "top talent" to the nation as he unveiled his latest efforts to reform residency laws after years of setbacks and stalemates.

"We discriminate against genius," Trump said of current policies, which he contended excessively favor family based immigration. "We discriminate against brilliance. We won't anymore once we get this passed."

The latest effort, spearheaded by Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, focuses on beefing up border security and rethinking the nation's green card system so that it would favor people with high-level skills, degrees and job offers instead of relatives of those already in the country. The proposed shift to a more merit-based system prioritizing high-skilled workers would mark a dramatic departure from the nation's largely family based approach, which officials said gives roughly 66% of green cards to those with family ties and 12% based on skills.

The president's plan, unveiled in a Rose Garden ceremony, has yet to be embraced by his own party — let alone Democrats — and faces dubious prospects in a divided Congress. The show of magnanimity comes as Trump seeks to put a softer facade on the signature campaign issue from his first campaign as he eyes his 2020 reelection. Full Story Here>>>
Factbox: More Roundup trials, appeals in store for Bayer after $2 billion verdict - From Reuters
Bayer shares continued to fall on Tuesday after a California jury on Monday awarded more than $2 billion in damages to a couple who alleged that the company’s glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup caused their cancers.

The third successive loss by Bayer in U.S. courts and highest award to date by a jury after finding glyphosate to be carcinogenic highlights the legal risks and mounting cost to the company of the burgeoning litigation it faces over its widely-used herbicide.

Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto for $63 billion last year, denies the allegations, saying decades of studies and regulatory approvals have shown glyphosate and Roundup to be safe for human use.

But the company faces similar U.S. lawsuits by more than 13,400 plaintiffs and shareholders have rebuked Bayer’s top management over its handling of the Monsanto acquisition and the litigation it inherited. Adverse jury verdicts have wiped more than 40% from Bayer’s market value since August.

Bayer on Tuesday said the litigation will take some time to conclude as no case has been subject to appellate review to assess key legal rulings in the trials. The company has vowed to appeal or already has appealed the verdicts. Full Story Here>>>
The dairy industry has fallen asleep
By Maggie Seiler, Associate Editor, Hoard's Dairyman
Particularly when it comes to understanding consumers and what they desire and demand from dairy products, Virginia Tech’s David Kohl emphasized that the industry has a long ways to go. At the recent Tri-State Dairy Nutrition Conference, he laid out his top four short- and long-term factors that will influence the economic outlook for dairy.
1. Trade
2. Technology in production
3. Politics
4. The consumer

Dairy Foods Innovation Opportunity: Provide an Experience. Make Dairy a Destination
From Donna Berry, Berry on Dairy Blog
We know taste reigns when it comes to food selection. After that an array of other attributes come into play, namely nutrition and price, and increasingly product story and environmental/sustainability platform. Experience is something often not considered during product development. But that’s exactly what many consumers seek out. Offer an experience and your product becomes a destination.

Do you think Impossible Burger is garnering so much attention because of taste, nutrition and price? It’s the promised experience that has curious shoppers and diners trying out this fake meat. They’ve read about how it’s made out of plants yet looks like a beef burger; how it has a red center simulating a medium cook. They want the experience that everyone’s talking about. It’s right up there with the ability back in the 90s to eat an entire box of Snackwells anything and consume zero fat. Experience is also what makes eating a pint of high-protein, nominal calorie ice cream enticing.

I’ve been around long enough to confidently say that, at best, the Impossible Burger will be on White Castle’s national menu for a year. (It might have staying power in some urban locations.) Currently it is offered as a slider with smoked cheddar, griddled onions and pickles. All that good stuff could make mud pie delicious. (Take note: it’s got real dairy cheese!) While the actual patty is cholesterol free and the sandwich is vegetarian, it has as much fat as a similar-sized 80/20 ground beef burger and provides 300 calories. It’s not a healthful choice. It’s an experience.
Future cartons will track milk from farm to fridge
By  Blaine Friedlander , Cornell Chronicle
Cornell food scientists are designing the milk carton of the future that will give consumers precise “best by” dates and improve sustainability by reducing food waste.
The  Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research  (FFAR), the  New York State Dairy Promotion Order  and  Chobani  have given $1.56 million to Cornell’s Milk Quality Improvement Program to develop milk carton technology that gives wholesalers, retailers and consumers accurate shelf life information.

“We can apply digital agriculture tools directly onto the milk cartons to decrease food waste, since consumers get rid of milk too fast,” said  Martin Wiedmann , the Gellert Family Professor in Food Safety and the project’s principal investigator. “We can accomplish this while improving the sustainability of our food supply.” Full Story Here>>>
Other Stories to Check Out This Week >>>
UGA/UF Corn Silage and Forage Field Day
The 2019  UGA and UF Corn Silage and Forage Field Day  will be held in Tifton, Georgia on June 20. The program starts at 8 AM and concludes with field demonstrations after lunch. The event includes a test plot tour along with educational stops that cover topics like pest control, grazing management and forage quality. A discussion concerning best management practices for making corn silage will also be held. The event will be held at the UGA Tifton Conference Center in Tifton. To register click here - there is no charge to attend, registration is needed for refreshments and lunch . View Brochure and Agenda Here>>>
Upcoming Events >>>
GA Dairy Classifieds
TO ADVERTISE: EMAIL AD AND CONTACT INFORMATION TO FARRAH NEWBERRY at gamilkproducers@gmail.com

Registered Brown Swiss dairy cows(6) and heifers(3) for sale. 7 X 24 2004 Featherlight trailer with tack area and 2 cuts $12,000.00 and an Artic 22 semen tank (has a few straws of beef semen inside) $450. Please contact Beth Gearhart, Waynesboro, GA, 352-603-2629 text or call

For Sale: 2016 Tatoma Vertical Twin Screw Mixer. Equipped with Front Discharge and Side Discharge Extension - $37,500.00. Please contact Jim or Stephanie Waite 334-222-7957 for more information. 

Calves wanted:  Competitive pricing with a 6 day a week pick up. Will buy bulls and heifers of all ages. Peter's Cattle Co. 470-255-8515

Young Stock Supervisor wanted -  Hart Agriculture Waynesboro GA
Grazing 500-1000 animals,   Must be familiar with rotational grazing and breeding. Please contact Maggie 352-507-2042 or   maggie@hartagriculture.com
 
Dairy Manager wanted -  Hart Agriculture Waynesboro GA
300-700 milking cows,   60 bale rotary, New Zealand style grazing system. Please contact Maggie 352-507-2042 or   maggie@hartagriculture.com

Bull Calves WANTED:  Competitive pricing with 6 day a week pickup. Brandon Mason Cattle Company 912-632-4490

For HIRE: Southeast DHIA  has a position to fill in the  West Central Georgia area for a  FIELD SERVICE TECHNICIAN.   Responsibilities include data  collection on area dairy farms  during milking time. S chedule is somewhat flexible  but the hours are non-typical. S ome travel and out-of-town work likely.  Applicants should be comfortable  with computers and software and have good communication and  organizational skills as well as  reliable transportation. Pickup Truck required. I f interested send a resume to   brian.winters@dhicoop.com

For Sale: Custom manure application and Dryhill manure equipment sales.  Contact Edwin @ 478-299-0717 with Agboys Custom Services LLC -  New 8"x52' lagoon pump with outriggers $24,000 (Pictured right)

For Sale: 3000 gallon Surge/Westfalia milk tank and wash system. Three phase condensers. 2002 model. Excellent condition. John B Gay, 478-494-5107

WANTED : DeLaval Westfalia  Neck Transponders: TN Dairy seeking used Westfalia neck band transponders.  Please contact Bill or Peggy Howell if interested at 423-972-9254 or 423-371-3032.

WANTED:  Looking for used pasteurizing and bottling equipment in working condition; Linda and Darrell Rankins, Jr.;  334-745-2357  (best times: mid-day and after 8 p.m.)

For Sale:   Jersey cows, heifers and calves for sale. Registered with AJCA, all ages! Contact Matt Holton at 770-718-8271, call or text. Dawsonville, GA.

FOR HIRE : Custom Silage Harvesting. Late model JD chopper. Will travel. Let me put your quality forage up! Nic Haynes, Muddy H Farms, 678-617-3379.

FOR SALE :  We have a continuous selection of fresh and springing heifers.   Call William at   (706) 768-2857  or visit our website at   crumpdairyreplacements.org   

Bullcalves Wanted :  Looking for Bullcalves to purchase - Barron Tench 864-844-2295 or  barron.tench@gmail.com    

TO ADVERTISE: EMAIL AD AND CONTACT INFORMATION TO FARRAH NEWBERRY at gamilkproducers@gmail.com