A dairy is a place where milk is stored and where butter, cheese and other dairy products are made, or a place where those products are sold. It may be a room, a building or a larger establishment. In the United States, the word may also describe a dairy farm or the part of a mixed farm dedicated to milk for human consumption, whether from cows, buffaloes, goats, yaks, sheep, horses or camels.
An agricultural subsidy is a government incentive paid to agribusinesses, agricultural organizations and farms to supplement their income, manage the supply of agricultural commodities, and influence the cost and supply of such commodities.
Dairy farming is a class of agriculture for the long-term production of milk, which is processed for the eventual sale of a dairy product. Dairy farming has a history that goes back to the early Neolithic era, around the seventh millennium BC, in many regions of Europe and Africa. Before the 20th century, milking was done by hand on small farms. Beginning in the early 20th century, milking was done in large scale dairy farms with innovations including rotary parlors, the milking pipeline, and automatic milking systems that were commercially developed in the early 1990s.
Raw milk or unpasteurized milk is milk that has not been pasteurized, a process of heating liquid foods to kill pathogens for safe consumption and extending the shelf life.
Fonterra Co-operative Group Limited is a New Zealand multinational publicly traded dairy co-operative owned by New Zealand farmers. The company is responsible for approximately 30% of the world's dairy exports and with revenue exceeding NZ $22 billion, making it New Zealand's largest company. It is the sixth-largest dairy company in the world as of 2022, as well as the largest in the Southern Hemisphere.
A marketing board is an organization created by many producers to try to market their product and increase consumption and thus prices. It can also be defined as an organization set up by a government to regulate the buying and selling of a certain commodity within a specified area. They most commonly exist to help sell farm products such as milk, eggs, beef or tripe and are funded by the farmers or processors of those crops or products. Marketing boards often also receive funding from governments as an agricultural subsidy. The leadership and strategies of the marketing boards are set through votes by the farmers who are members of the board.
Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy, in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise. The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit while satisfying the needs of consumers for products related to natural resources such as biotechnology, farms, food, forestry, fisheries, fuel, and fiber.
A price floor is a government- or group-imposed price control or limit on how low a price can be charged for a product, good, commodity, or service. It is one type of price support; other types include supply regulation and guarantee government purchase price. A price floor must be higher than the equilibrium price in order to be effective. The equilibrium price, commonly called the "market price", is the price where economic forces such as supply and demand are balanced and in the absence of external influences the (equilibrium) values of economic variables will not change, often described as the point at which quantity demanded and quantity supplied are equal. Governments use price floors to keep certain prices from going too low.
The Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996, known informally as the Freedom to Farm Act, the FAIR Act, or the 1996 U.S. Farm Bill, was the omnibus 1996 farm bill that, among other provisions, revises and simplifies direct payment programs for crops and eliminates milk price supports through direct government purchases.
The National Farmers Organization (NFO) is a producer movement founded in the United States in 1955, by farmers, especially younger farmers with mortgages, frustrated by too often receiving crop and produce prices that produced a living that paid less than the minimum wage, and, too often, might not even cover the cost of seed, fertilizer, land, etc. This was despite the many hours that might be devoted by an entire family. This was despite mortgages having to be paid in years of drought or hail or other crop failure. It was despite too high injury rates related to lifting and to high mortality rates due to working with heavy, sharp equipment. Frustrated farmers, thus, tried to obtain better prices. At first the methods included withholding of commodities from sale. The early methods also included opposition to those coops unwilling to withhold goods from market. During protests, farmers might purposely sell food directly to neighbors instead of through the co-ops. They might also destroy food in dramatic ways, in an attempt to gain media exposure, for example, slaughtering excess dairy cows. A 1964 incident brought negative attention when two members were crushed under the rear wheels of a cattle truck. They did not succeed in obtaining a Canadian-style quota system. Methods, thus, are different now.
The share of agriculture in Austria in the Austrian economy declined steadily after World War II, agriculture continues to represent an important element of the economy because of its social and political significance. The Chamber of Agriculture remains on an equal level with the chambers of commerce and labor, although its members produce only a fraction of the GDP that industrial and commercial workers produce.
The Market Sharing Quota (MSQ), In Canadian agricultural policy, is the federally-determined target for the amount of industrial milk to produce nationwide each year as part of its policy of supply management. It is determined by estimating the domestic demand for dairy products on a butterfat basis, adding about 3% to cover exports and subtracting the volume of approved imports.
Dairy farming is one of the largest agricultural sectors in Canada. Dairy has a significant presence in all of the provinces and is one of the top two agricultural commodities in seven out of ten provinces.
Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO), is the marketing organization and regulatory body representing over 4,000 dairy farmers in Ontario, Canada. DFO was formerly known as the Ontario Milk Marketing Board (OMMB), which was established as result of the 1965 Ontario Milk Act. On August 1, 1995, the Ontario Milk Marketing Board and the Ontario Cream Producers' Marketing Board merged to form Dairy Farmers of Ontario.
Synlait Milk Ltd. is a New Zealand dairy processor selling dairy and plant-based nutritional products, ingredients and powders to multinational customers worldwide. It is headquartered in Dunsandel, Canterbury, with additional manufacturing sites in Auckland and Pōkeno, a Research and Development Centre in Palmerston North and offices in Beijing and in Shanghai. The company manufactures milk powders and foodservice products such as infant formula, adult and early life nutrition products, ingredients such as lactoferrin and foodservice products such as UHT cream.
Canada's supply management, abbreviated SM, is a national agricultural policy framework used across the country, which controls the supply of dairy, poultry and eggs through production and import controls and pricing mechanisms. The supply management system was authorized by the 1972 Farm Products Agencies Act, which established the two national agencies that oversee the system. The Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada federal department is responsible for both the Canadian Dairy Commission and its analogue for eggs, chicken and turkey products, the Farm Products Council of Canada. Five national supply management organizations, the SM-5 Organizations — Egg Farmers of Canada (EFC), Turkey Farmers of Canada (TFC), Chicken Farmers of Canada (CFC), the Canadian Hatching Egg Producers (CHEP) and the Ottawa-based Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC), a Crown corporation — in collaboration with provincial and national governing agencies, organizations and committees, administer the supply management system.
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices affect producers and consumers of food. Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing and food distribution. Fluctuation in food prices is determined by a number of compounding factors. Geopolitical events, global demand, exchange rates, government policy, diseases and crop yield, energy costs, availability of natural resources for agriculture, food speculation, changes in the use of soil and weather events directly affect food prices. To a certain extent, adverse price trends can be counteracted by food politics.
Trump administration farmer bailouts are a series of United States bailout programs introduced during the presidency of Donald Trump as a consequence of his "America First" economic policy to help US farmers suffering due to the US-China trade war and trade disputes with European Union, Japan, Canada, Mexico, and others. China and respectively European reconcilable tariffs imposed on peanut butter, soybeans, orange juice, and other agriculture products had hit hard, especially swing states, such as Iowa, Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Dairy is a primary source of agricultural output in the state of Vermont. As of December 2021, the state had 568 dairy farms milking cattle, sheep, and/or goats which produced 2.5 billion pounds of milk annually. Vermont ranks 15th in the United States for raw milk production.
Buttergate was a 2021 event in which Canadian butter became more difficult to spread due to increased hardness. Canadian consumers expressed disappointment that butter stopped becoming soft at room temperature. Food experts attributed the hardness to an increased use in palm oil in dairy cattle diet, prompting the Dairy Farmers of Canada to recommend to farmers to cease adding palm oil to cow's diets.
