WEB SITE OF THE MONTH
Milk Marketing Education

Dr. Allen Young
USU Extension Dairy Specialist
    Many people are interested in keeping up on milk marketing, policy and futures. Some dairy farmers pay little attention other than to look at their milk check, while others can quote the price of block cheese five minutes after it has been announced. The sites this month are about these subjects and should cover the interests of most dairy farmers. They are good sources of information, whether you are a novice or feel comfortable with milk marketing (I'd like to meet you if you are one of the latter). Collectively, these are excellent sites for keeping up with milk marketing and policies that will affect you. They have news, bulletins, conference proceedings, prices, outlooks, and interesting tidbits. I noticed when I clicked on one item at the Wisconsin site that it used Adobe Acrobat as a reader. If you don't have it, it can be downloaded free. The marketing sites are:

Cornell Program on Dairy Markets & Policy

Penn State - Dairy Outlook page

UW-Madison - Dairy Futures page

    Even if you don't plan on spending much time at these sites, everyone needs to go to the Cornell site and look at the graphic displayed on the startup screen. It shows the Consumer Price Index for the relative retail price of all products, all food, and dairy products from 1998 thru 2001. The picture says it all.