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
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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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SIGN-UP FORM
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_____________________________________
Name
__________________________________________
Address
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Phone
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Norman D. Brock, Attorney
Offices in Kennewick & Spokane
(509) 622-4707 • corey@brocklf.com
Office in Davenport
(509) 725-3101 • norm@brocklf.com
MEET THE SPEAKERS
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Corey works primarily with farm families and farm related businesses in meeting their transition and business goals.
Corey has significant experience particularly with respect to LLCs, buyouts and buy-sell agreements in corporations
and LLCs, structuring estate planning for the non-farm child(ren) vs. the children on the farm, mergers and
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with families in designing a transition plan that meets the families’ desire. Corey also assists in structuring entities
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Spokane • Kennewick • Davenport • Moses Lake
Phone (509) 622-4707 • Fax (509) 622-4705
Email Corey@BrockLF.com
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