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.
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer might own the farmland or might work as a laborer on land owned by others. In most developed economies, a "farmer" is usually a farm owner (landowner), while employees of the farm are known as farm workers. However, in other older definitions a farmer was a person who promotes or improves the growth of plants, land, or crops or raises animals by labor and attention.
A farm is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used for specialized units such as arable farms, vegetable farms, fruit farms, dairy, pig and poultry farms, and land used for the production of natural fiber, biofuel, and other commodities. It includes ranches, feedlots, orchards, plantations and estates, smallholdings, and hobby farms, and includes the farmhouse and agricultural buildings as well as the land. In modern times, the term has been extended so as to include such industrial operations as wind farms and fish farms, both of which can operate on land or at sea.
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.
Land O'Lakes, Inc. is an American member-owned agricultural cooperative based in the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburb of Arden Hills, Minnesota, United States, focusing on the dairy industry. The cooperative has 1,959 direct producer-members, 751 member-cooperatives, and about 9,000 employees who process and distribute products for about 300,000 agricultural producers, handling 12 billion pounds of milk annually. It is ranked third on the National Cooperative Bank Co-op 100 list of mutuals and cooperatives. The co-op is one of the largest producers of butter and cheese in the United States through its dairy foods business; serves producers, animal owners and their families through more than 4,700 local cooperatives, independent dealers and other large retailers through its Purina Animal Nutrition business; and delivers seed, crop protection products, agricultural services and agronomic insights to 1,300 locally owned and operated cooperative and independent agricultural retailers and their grower customers through its WinField United business.
The Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC) is an Ottawa-based Government of Canada Crown Corporation that provides a framework for managing Canada's dairy industry.
The Farmers' Holiday Association was a movement of Midwestern United States farmers who, during the Great Depression, endorsed the withholding of farm products from the market, in essence creating a farmers' holiday from work. The Farmers' Holiday Association was organized in May 1932 by Milo Reno. The group urged farmers to declare a "holiday" from farming, with a slogan of "Stay at Home-Buy Nothing-Sell Nothing" and "Lets call a Farmer's Holiday, a Holiday let's hold. We'll eat our wheat and ham and eggs, And let them eat their gold".
The Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture; it maintains programs in five commodity areas: cotton and tobacco; dairy; fruit and vegetable; livestock and seed; and poultry. These programs provide testing, standardization, grading and market news services for those commodities, and oversee marketing agreements and orders, administer research and promotion programs, and purchase commodities for federal food programs. The AMS enforces certain federal laws such as the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act and the Federal Seed Act. The AMS budget is $1.2 billion. It is headquartered in the Jamie L. Whitten Building in Washington, D.C.
The Iowa Cow War was a series of violent disputes over the testing of cows for bovine tuberculosis in 1931. After distrustful farmers tried and failed to repeal the testing program, they congregated to block tests from taking place. The farmers believed that the test might infect cows with tuberculosis or make pregnant cows have spontaneous abortions. They also believed that the testing was unconstitutional. The owner of Muscatine radio station KTNT, Norman G. Baker, spread misinformation which resulted in more farmers protesting the testing, sometimes violently. Fifty veterinarians, all working in pairs and while being protected, gave injections to 5,000 cattle per day for a week. The Iowa Cow War came to a conclusion when 31 Iowa National Guard units were deployed to stop the protesting. Two farmers were arrested for their actions during the conflict. There was one casualty, and no deaths. Most of the testing was completed by October 1931.
The National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) is a statutory body set up by an Act of the Parliament of India and an Institution of National Importance. It is under administrative control of the Ministry of Fisheries, Animal Husbandry and Dairying of the Government of India. The main office is in Anand, Gujarat with regional offices throughout the country. NDDB's subsidiaries include Indian Dairy Machinery Company Ltd (IDMC), Mother Dairy and Indian Immunologicals Limited, Hyderabad, NDDB Dairy Services, NDDB Mrida Ltd. The Board was created to finance and support producer-owned and controlled organisations. Its programmes and activities seek to strengthen farmer cooperatives and support national policies that are favourable to the growth of such institutions. Cooperative principles and cooperative strategies are fundamental to the board's efforts.
An agricultural cooperative, also known as a farmers' co-op, is a producer cooperative in which farmers pool their resources in certain areas of activities.
Government cheese is processed cheese provided to welfare beneficiaries, Food Stamp recipients, and the elderly receiving Social Security in the United States, as well as to food banks and churches. This processed cheese was used in military kitchens during World War II and has been used in schools since the 1950s.
Farmland Industries was the largest agricultural cooperative in North America when it eventually sold all of its assets in 2002–04. During its 74-year history, Farmland served its farmer membership as a diversified, integrated organization, playing a significant role in agricultural markets both domestically and worldwide.
Many farmers in India depend on animal husbandry for their livelihood. In addition to supplying milk, meat, eggs, wool, their castings (dung) and hides, animals, mainly bullocks, are the major source of power for both farmers and dairies. Thus, animal husbandry plays an important role in the rural economy. The gross value of output from this sector was 8,123 billion Rupees in FY 2015–16.
The 1933 Wisconsin milk strike was a series of strikes conducted by a cooperative group of Wisconsin dairy farmers in an attempt to raise the price of milk paid to producers during the Great Depression. Three main strike periods occurred in 1933, with length of time and level of violence increasing during each one.
The Southern Dairy Compact was an agreement between thirteen states in the southern United States. It was proposed to ensure the continued marketability of dairy producers in the member states and to supply a stable, local supply of milk products to the region. The proposed agreement was modeled on the Northeast Interstate Dairy Compact, that would allow member states to jointly establish a minimum farm price for fluid milk that is above the federally mandated minimum price level in the region.
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.
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.
Charles Walters Jr. was an economist, journalist, publisher, editor, author, entrepreneur, and family farm advocate. A tireless advocate for "peoples capitalism", Walters was a president of the National Organization for Raw Materials (NORM), a long-time executive board member, and founder and editor of Acres USA, the North American voice of eco-agriculture, organic farming, and the family farm.
