A smaller milking herd, tight replacement heifer supplies to keep barns full and slight improvements in milk income margins contributed to a slowdown in dairy culls marketed for beef to end 2023. That trend has continued to start 2024.

Here’s a summary of news impacting your dairy in this third week of February 2024.

Improved working capital and equity positions in 2022 helped reduce the number of U.S. farms filing for Chapter 12 bankruptcy in 2023. There will likely be additional financial stressors in 2024.

2023 annual milk production was down 98 million pounds compared to the 2022 total. However, annual total milk production has increased 9.9% from 2014.

Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an existing stocks order for dicamba products previously registered for over-the-top (OTT) use on dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean. This comes as relief to growers who have already placed orders for dicamba-tolerant seed and the herbicide itself for the 2024 growing season.

Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) uniform milk prices slipped lower in January, a combination of lower Class I and Class III milk class prices and continued depooling of Class IV milk.

Every five years, the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) conducts a Census of Agriculture. The data collected helps to identify trends and changes in U.S. agriculture over time. The 2022 census released earlier this week shows a continued decline in the total number of U.S. farms, which was down 7% from 2017.

Here’s a summary of news impacting your dairy as we approach the middle of February 2024.

December 2023 U.S. agricultural export numbers revealed that despite limited growth in the dairy products sector, replacement heifer exports finished the year at the second-highest total since 2018. Here’s Progressive Dairy’s 30,000-foot view at dairy-related export categories.

The USDA’s World Ag Supply and Demand Estimates (WASDE) report identifies milk and feed factors potentially impacting dairy producer income in the year ahead.