Program on Dairy Markets and Policy

The Conference Committee of the House and Senate agriculture committees today released their compromise version of the next Farm Bill — the Agricultural Act of 2018. This compromise will now go back to the respective chambers for a vote (which is expected to be positive in both) and then to the President for his signature. If all goes well, we will have a new set of farm, food, forestry, etc legislation in place for the new year.

We have written a new Briefing Paper which is a summnary of the dairy provisions contained in the bill. Although the Margin Protection Program for Dairy Producers was badly tarnished by its inability to provide assistance to dairy farmers when most everyone felt market conditions warranted some help, the new program Dairy Margin Coverage program represents a very significantly revised version of MPP-Dairy. It will most certainly be well worth a serious look by farms of about average size or smaller, and it offers some appealing income risk management possibilities for all but the very largest farms.

We're range-bound! Dairy markets are prepared to move up a bit and then retreat from those gains in the absence of any strong evidence that milk supplies are tightening or demand is picking up. Mark and Bob discuss the markets we face between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The outlook video is about 9-1/2 minutes long and you can access it here or from the Podcast section of the web site.

John Shutske stops by the office to talk about farm stress. We captured three short videos (11 to 15 minutes each) which talk about chronic stess, how stress affects us, and exerting some control over stress in our lives. You can access the videos here or from the Miscellaneous Podcast section of the web site.