It wasn’t that long ago that just about everyone said if you are looking to diversify or get out of cows, you should get into goats. The market for these little milk makers, seemingly, had no where to go but up: major processors were expanding or adding product lines, consumption trends positive, and prices were… Read More
Category: Dairy
Looking to cut your hay close, clean, and quick while conditioning it for faster dry down and nutrient preservation? If that’s the plan, it may be time to take a closer look at New Hollands’s new Discbine 209 and 210 disc mower-conditioners. The side-pull mowers were rolled out at the recent Farm Progress Show at Boone, Iowa…. Read More
There was a tremendous amount of relief, and some consternation, when the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) was finally struck. Cleary, many industries are simply happy that things did not get worse. The dairy industry, though, feels that things did get worse for them. Dr. Richard Barichello, professor, food and resource economics at the University… Read More
Can robots effectively milk cows on large U.S. dairy farms? That’s a question Plymouth, Indiana farmer Brian Houin is determined to answer at his family-owned Homestead Dairy operation. Canadian farmers have had tremendous success using robot milkers in smaller dairy operations, but Houin is putting the milking machines to the test on a whole new level. In… Read More
What a week in Wisconsin. When I arrived at the annual World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, early last week, farmers across the U.S. were still trying to understand the potential impact that the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) could have on their farms. Early television reports featured emotional farmers sharing tearful thanks for a new… Read More
Let’s face it — when it comes to food marketing and advertising, companies get it so very wrong most of the time. Every now and again, though, companies get it so very right. In case you haven’t seen it, American dairy co-op Land O’Lakes recently released its fresh take on the Old McDonald nursery rhyme,… Read More
During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland wore a t-shirt that read: “Keep calm and negotiate NAFTA.” To farmers looking at the result, the shirt could just as easily have read “I renegotiated NAFTA, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Canada came to the table with very little… Read More
Anaerobic digesters have popped up on farms across Ontario in recent years, but there are none quite like the digester Rob McKinlay has installed at Harcolm Farms at Beachville, Ontario. What makes it unique is its size – at 20 kilowatts, it’s 10- to 20-times smaller than the other 42 digesters currently operating on Ontario… Read More
The 25-year-old trade deal known as NAFTA is no more. As of Sunday night, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement know as USMCA was born. So what does this mean for producers? Let us break it down for you… Increased market access for American dairy farmers So far, market access into the Canadian dairy sector has been… Read More
At one hundred thousand feet the new USMCA (NAFTA 2.0) comes with little change, according to most main stream analysts. For agriculture we know that this is not true. One of the agricultural sectors hit hardest is the Canadian dairy industry through concessions to the United States in this new deal. The concessions are two… Read More