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January 19, 2018 Lee Mielke Enforcement review provides insight for dairymen By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press Barrels roll to 9-year low By LEE MIELKE For the Capital Press C ash dairy prices fell the second week of the new year. The Cheddar blocks saw daily slippage un- til Friday when they reversed, gained 1 3/4-cents, and closed at $1.4550 per pound, still down 4 cents on the week and 27 cents below a year ago. Friday’s large crash was the barrels plunging to $1.2175, down 17 1/4-cents on the week, the lowest price since July 30, 2009, 42 1/4-cents below a year ago, and a whopping 23 3/4-cents below the blocks. Six cars of block traded hands last week at the CME and 37 of barrel. The markets were closed Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday but the blocks were up 1 1/4-cents Tuesday, to $1.4675. The barrels jumped 5 3/4-cents and climbed back to $1.2750, 19 1/4-cents below the blocks. Dairy Market News re- ports that Midwestern cheese- makers continue to receive of- fers of discounted spot milk, although above the discount- ed prices of previous weeks. Some cheese producers are cutting back production and taking time off before gearing up for the Super Bowl. Others have begun to ramp up and are operating seven days a week. Western cheese sales are reportedly “within seasonal norms.” Orders for the Super Bowl have started to pick up but some contacts are “not optimistic about the future de- velopment of the cheese mar- ket due to supplies outweigh- ing current demand.” Spot butter fell to $2.1550 per pound last Thursday, low- est price since May 10, 2017, but closed Friday at $2.16, down 7 3/4-cents on the week and 65 cents below a year ago. The butter held at $2.16 Tuesday. Cream offers are aplen- ty for butter producers and cream continues to flow into the upper Midwest from the West and Southwest. Plentiful cream and low multiples are prompting some Western butter makers to ac- tively operate churns near full capacity. Cash Grade A nonfat dry milk closed Friday at 66 3/4-cents per pound, down 1 1/4-cents on the week and 36 1/2-cents below a year ago. The powder rebounded 2 1/4-cents Tuesday, hitting 69 cents per pound. GDT up 4.9 percent The second Global Dairy Trade auction of 2018 added to the encouragement of the first, with a 4.9 percent gain in the weighted average of all products offered. That followed the 2.2 per- cent rise Jan. 2. The quantity sold slipped to 51.4 million pounds, lowest since June 2017. Butter led the gains, up 8.8 percent, following a 0.6 per- cent advance Jan. 2. Skim milk powder was up 6.5 percent after rising 1.6 percent last time. Cheddar cheese was up 5.2 percent, after falling 2.1 per- cent. Whole milk powder was up 5.1 percent, after a 4.2 per- cent advance, and anhydrous milkfat was up 2.2 percent, after slipping 0.2 percent last time. FC Stone equated the GDT 80 percent butterfat butter price to $2.1669 per pound U.S. CME butter closed Tues- day at $2.16. GDT Cheddar cheese equated to $1.5814 per pound U.S. and compares to Tuesday’s CME block Ched- dar at $1.4675. GDT skim milk powder averaged 82.46 cents per pound U.S. and whole milk powder averaged $1.3651 per pound. CME Grade A nonfat dry milk price closed Tuesday at 69 cents per pound. 11 Dairy Subscribe to our weekly dairy or livestock email newsletter at CapitalPress.com/newsletters Dairy Markets CapitalPress.com TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Exces- sive snowfall followed by warm weather caused unprecedented flood- ing last winter and a flurry of dis- charge investigations at numerous Idaho dairies. While it was a situation dairymen would probably rather forget, a re- view of enforcement actions by the Idaho State Department of Agricul- ture offers lessons on being prepared in the future. “There’s no argument the amount of run-on we experienced was ex- traordinary,” Scott Leibsle, ISDA deputy administrator, said during an Idaho Dairymen’s Association district meeting last week. The run-on could not have been avoided, but dairy producers’ deci- sions before and during the flooding determined whether there was a vio- lation, he said. Of the 42 documented discharges in 2017, 40 took place in the Janu- ary-February flooding. ISDA issued 18 notices of violation and 19 admin- istrative warnings, and no action was taken on five. In almost half of the 18 notices of violation, flood waters ran across fields with unincorporated land-ap- plied nutrients. Manure sitting on top of frozen ground was a management decision and resulted in a discharge being worse than it would have oth- erwise been, he said. Other violations resulted from producers’ failure to maintain run-on/ run-off prevention, such as berming. That’s the producer’s responsibility, and there’s no excuse for failing to re- pair areas vital to the dairy’s nutrient management plan, he said. Other violations resulted from producers’ failure to correct previous- ly documented violations. Producers need to pay attention to those recom- mendations and deadlines, he said. The department doesn’t operate in a vacuum, Leibsle said. It takes a common-sense approach and wants to hear dairymen’s side of things, but it won’t help if the producer made no attempt to mitigate a discharge. On the flip side, taking fast action works in a producer’s favor, he said. One of the first things an inspector looks at is whether the dairy’s nutri- ent management plan is updated and accurately describes the operation. Producers should update that plan at a minimum of every five years and more often if things change, he said. If the plan is not updated, it’s a “strike against you,” he said. The department also looks into the status of lagoons in the fall and whether they were empty going into the winter, he said. “The biggest question we ask is, Were you set up to make it through the winter?” he said. Phosphorus indexing offers dairies flexibility, precision By CAROL RYAN DUMAS Capital Press TWIN FALLS, Idaho — Dairies will see a phase-in of a new nutrient management standard if the Idaho Legis- lature approves phosphorus indexing in their nutrient management plans. The new standard, which went through the Idaho State Department of Agri- culture rulemaking process last summer, is aimed at better preventing phospho- rus losses though runoff or leaching. It would also give dairies more flexibility in nutrient management by determining risks and appropriate phos- phorus application in individ- ual fields, as opposed to the existing total farm threshold standard. Carol Ryan Dumas/Capital Press Megan Satterwhite, nutrient and water management technician with IDA Consulting Services, walks dairy producers through phos- phorus indexing in a hypothetical dairy operation during an Idaho Dairymen’s Association district meeting in Twin Falls on Jan. 9. Best management prac- tices to minimize the loss of phosphorus to the environ- ment are a key component of the standard, said Rick Naer- ebout, CEO of Idaho Dairy- men’s Association, during the association’s district meeting last week. The existing standard came into play in 1999 and needed updating. IDA set out to develop a new standard for Idaho that would both protect the environment and give dairymen more flexibility to manage their operations, he said. After looking into exist- ing standards in surround- ing states and other major dairy-producing states, IDA Consulting Services staff and scientists with the USDA Ag- ricultural Research Service at Kimberly, Idaho, agreed on phosphorous indexing, he said. Indexing looks at the source of phosphorus in the landscape and how it’s being managed and transported to assess the risk of loss from that landscape, said April Leytem, ARS research soil scientist. It provides an overall rat- ing for potential phosphorus loss from a site, with a rela- tive ranking that allows dairy producers to focus manage- ment on high-risk sites, she said. It includes practices that can be used to mitigate risks, such as the use of cover crops, conservation tillage, drip irri- gation, perennial crops, resi- due management, absorbent polyacrylamide, dikes, berms and sediment basins. It also provides credits for those best management practices, she said. Fields are assessed on an individual basis to target management strategies for risk, said Stephanie Kulesza, nutrient and water manage- ment specialist with IDA Consulting Services, a divi- sion of IDA. 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