Milk prices going up; nitrate report gets more coverage

A story about USDA milk production forecasts for 2012 and 2013 included commentary from Leslie "Bees" Butler, UC Cooperative Extension specialist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics as UC Davis.

Rising feed prices have caused some producers to sell cows rather than bear the expense of feeding them. Another option is to slaughter cows. Dairies have been doing that a lot -- to the chagrin of glut-wary beef producers -- since 2009 when the all milk price dropped to as low as $11.30 per hundred pounds, the story said.

A strong dollar at the time made foreign goods cheaper and domestically produced goods more expensive, Butler told reporter Courtenay Edelhart. That dried up the export market for American milk and led to oversupply at home that still hasn't been entirely corrected, he said.

Water agency urges farmers to test ground water for contamination
KTVU.com

Landmark new rules adopted by the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board will require farmers to test ground water for nitrate contamination and report their fertilizer usage, according to the KTVU report.

The story mentioned that a recent UC Davis study showed 254,000 people in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley were at risk of drinking water contaminated with nitrates, much of which came from fertilizer.

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