Tractors through BerlinAre you ready to parade your tractor in Washington? German dairy farmers don't care much about D.C., but they plowed into Berlin on Monday to raise a ruckus about their milk checks. They had 700 tractors rolling through downtown, garnering attention and creating a bunch of traffic jams.

Their complaint? They're getting just 20 euro cents per liter for their milk, which works out to about $6.62 per hundredweight. The crowd of protesters, on and off the tractors, was estimated at 6,000. Germany's parliament is considering a tax break for farmers that would cost the national treasury some 525 million euros ($734 million U.S.).

Last week, six farmers camped out Chancellor Angela Merkel's front door and staged a hunger strike. They called it off after five days when Merkel refused to meet with them and they had gotten really, really hungry.

The agricultural situation has gotten so bad in Germany and other parts of the EU, that a lot of politicians are concerned for their jobs. In Germany alone, the dismal milk price could drive one out of every five dairymen out of business.

Call it supply control or call it low milk prices, the dairy business in the U.S. is in a deep funk, and people are looking everywhere for solutions. Lancaster Farming correspondent Steve Taylor covered a meeting in Vermont recently to discuss a radical plan to stabilize milk prices. Their plan would penalize producers who increased year-to-year production. Interesting. You can check Steve's article in our current edition.

What is that thing? Seriously. I want one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ONJfp95y oE

I just scared myself so bad my eyes rolled back in my head, my teeth chattered and I would have fallen over except that I was already lying on the sofa, working on my blog. It started last Friday, when Senator Mike Brubaker was talking to a group of farmers in New Holland about the current state of farm finances as they relate to dairy farmers and the beleaguered Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture budget.

Grim stuff, it was.

Before he talked about issues, Brubaker handed out a questionnaire to his listeners, asking them which PDA programs they felt merited funding and which didn't. There were 29 programs on the list, covering things like ag research, nutrient management, farm safety, FFA, 4-H, marketing programs, fairs, etc.

My eyes fixed right away on hardwoods research and promotion. I figured the tree guys can handle their own marketing, promotion, research, administration...whatever. They don't need taxpayer money to fund what is essentially a private industry.

So then I figured, "That is meat for a blog. Yeah. Juicy meat." I could have just taken off on hardwoods, and ranted for a few paragraphs about lumber barons or maybe earls with their snouts in the public feed trough, but I thought, "I'll get some facts first and really blow it up."

I went to page 378 - I believe it was - of the 901-page 2009-10 budget to find out how much we the taxpayers were paying these guys. In the 2007-08 budget, they got $780,000. In 2008-09 they got $760,000. And in 2009-10, in the midst of one of the worst financial crises the state, the nation and the world have ever seen, these tree-growers are getting zero. That's right, zero. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Goose egg. The check is not in the mail.

I was pleasantly surprised, as you can imagine. I thought, "Wow! That means the politicians are thinking the way I'm thinking."

Then I had another thought. "Or else it means I'm thinking like a politician."

That's when the eyes rolled back...

Oh they's so fresh and fine...and they's just around the corner. That's a paraphrase of the strawberry woman's song from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, in case you didn't know. This week's Home on the Range page in Lancaster Farming pays homage to the sweet red berry, due this week at your local farm stand. Love them berries. Love that Gershwin. I just had to sing it. By the time I got to "...and they's just offen that vi-i-i-ine..." Louie had looked at me with his sad, pitying basset eyes and dragged his ears off to another room.

This is how they do "Got Milk?" in England. If you understand this, please send me an email. Like I say...give me Gershwin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY_7EOVa310

The Murray needs a miracle. Or a whole new approach. Southeastern Australia's wine growing regions are facing their toughest water challenge in over a century and nobody's quite sure what to do. The region's worst drought in 117 years has dried up the streams, the lakes, the aquifers. The Murray River, which flows down from the north, once accounted for 10 percent of the water supply for the city of Adelaide's one million people. Because everything else has dried up, the people of Adelaide now count on the Murray for 90 percent of their water.

It's a tale of drought, climate change and decades of overuse. Not only is the Murray greatly reduced in volume, the water in it is turning salty. And some environmentalists Down Under are thinking about about letting freshwater wetlands turn into salty estuaries, like the Chesapeake Bay.

It's a cautionary tale not just about climate change, but about situations more regions will face as fresh water becomes an increasingly valuable resource we can ill afford to mismanage. You can read the tale of the Murray here: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject

The livestock above, the livestock below and the gasbags in between. Troy Bishopp, a farmer and a Lancaster Farming contributor, uncorks some earthy wisdom for the elucidation of those who would tinker with the cow's digestive tract as a way to solve global warming. He also reveals embarrassing tidbits about his own digestive process.

So...what goes on at your family reunions?   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6EYrqIn0yI

In our continuing efforts to keep you up-to-date on Icelandic agriculture, at times we may divert from the seriousness of our task to the light-hearted, or even downright frivolous, report. Today, we have unleashed the clown within to bring you this report on exactly what it is that makes an Icelandic farmer an Icelandic farmer. We would have loved to bring you a firsthand, person-to-person account of just how funny the average Icelandic farmer finds this list, but due to unfortunate travel budget restrictions, we can only offer up this Google-gleaned account:

You might be a dairy farmer in Iceland:

 -If your backyard ends at an electric fence.

-If the kids drinking glasses are milk replacer cups.

-If manure is a dinner table topic.

-If you know the price of milk per hundred weight but not by the gallon..

-If your kids sandbox is an old tractor tire.

-If you have three pairs of Tingley boots and two pair all go to the same foot.

-If the medicine cabinet in your house has a container of bag balm.

-If you’ve ever gotten an award for fat (and were proud of it).

-If your idea of a power lunch is a sandwich on a tractor.

-If your idea of carpentry work includes a chainsaw and bent nails.

-If fence repair is second nature.

-If you can fix anything with baler twine, a piece of wire, duct tape and a pair of vise grips.

-If your idea of a neighborhood watch is someone calling you to let you know your heifers are out.

-If the front door on your house has the key in it all the time so it doesn’t get lost.

-If your idea of mass transit is moving your cows to the crowd area, a holding pen or pasture.

-If most of your good headgear advertises semen or seeds.

-If you have more than a dozen cats.

-If you have more pictures of your cows than of your kids.

-If your idea of overnite delivery is pulling a calf at three in the morning.

-If you can remember the name of every cow on the farm but the names of your children elude you..

For the past several weeks, Lancaster Farming Staff Writer Chris Torres has been sweeping the web for brief items of interest to our readers. His Ag Briefs come in regional, national and international varieties. Look for them every week in the first section.

Can you do this with a puppy?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBTx-tKo-T4

Last week, Masaru Yamada visited Lancaster County farms, this week he's in New York, then it's on to Detroit and Chicago. Yamada is a senior writer with Japan Agricultural News, a daily newspaper with some 360,000 readers.  One would think his readers have enough time to read a daily farm paper since the average farm size is just six acres. (That's probably not a fair statement, especially coming from me, since my only crop is about half-an-acre of plantain, clover, dandelion, some kind of creeping stuff and a little bit of grass - aka my lawn - and sometimes I don't get around to cutting it as often as I should. But still...six acres.)
I think if I were an actual farmer and I could make a living off six acres and maybe a little part-time job - like blogging for a farm newspaper - I'd be having the time of my life.  Another dream job would be working for a huge farm daily and getting assignments to travel around the world and see how other people are doing things. 

Or how about working for a nice-sized farming weekly and traveling the world to see how other folks are doing things? I hear there are a lot of interesting things going on in Iceland this time of year, for example.

Boss? I hear there are a lot of interesting things going on in Iceland this time of year.  You know, like lambs and beef and dairy cows...stuff like that.  It's a small country, low travel expenses...

I could camp out.

I think those cows in the picture need to be investigated.

Boss? Boss?

Are you igno...can you hear me, boss?

Wielding hammers and saws and fueled by jambalaya, a group of Penn State ag science students spent their nine-day spring break helping to get ag education on the move again in Katrina-ravaged Louisiana. The students spent part of their time in Iberville, just outside Baton Rouge, and the rest of their stay in inner-city New Orleans. A report of their adventures is in Section B of the current issue of Lancaster Farming.

Paint your own cow. This isn't a contest. Unless I can announce the winners in a blog from Reykjavic. http://www.courant.com/news/local/photo/hc-cow-flash,0,4170321.flash

Louie

I didn't know I was going to get an editorial consultant when we picked Louie up in Connecticut about a month ago. He was four months old on Saturday, and he's really developed a taste for newspapers.  Mostly he eats them. You might say he devours the news, and on Sundays he's got his work cut out for him. That's the day we read the local paper, the New York Times on occasion, and, of course, the latest edition of Lancaster Farming.

Yesterday, I went for my second or third cup of coffee, absent-mindedly put my paper on the floor and when I came back there was Louie, actually looking at it. You know, cock the head this way, then that way, then wonder why all the words are upside down.

But, at least, not eating it. I took it as a sign of respect.

Maybe he knows how I pay for his puppy food.

Niche marketing kept a 75-year family farm tradition alive for Layne and Beth Klein of Easton, Pa. When their 70-cow herd fell victim to tumbling milk prices in January, 2003, the Kleins held on to their farm, which had been in the family since 1934, by selling the herd. They kept a few replacement heifers. When the heifers started milking, the Kleins became cheesemakers. They now have a farm store, a westore, and sell 20 varieties of cheese.  They also sell raw milk, eggs, their own beef, yogurt and other products out of their farm store. Lancaster Farming alum Lou Ann Good,  now a correspondent, reports on the Kleins' turnaround in the May Eastern Dairy Reporter, part of your current edition.

I did this when I was a kid. But it's less scary when they just roll you into the creek. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYQn9nl07M4

Cornbelt planters have seen a lot of shed time so far this season, but you can bet farmers in the eastern cornbelt will be burning a lot of diesel next week.  At least if the weather forecast for the next 10 days or so holds up. Daily forecasts for St. Louis and nearby areas is sunny-times-10, banishing clouds from both the skies and the minds of thousands of guys who just want to get out in the field and work.

Yesterday, the Kansas City Star reported that planting activity has hardly gotten out of the starting gate in many part of the cornbelt.  Illinois, for example, had just 10 percent of the seed in the ground, compared to the usual 80 percent this time of year. Indiana had 11 percent instead of the usual 70 percent. Missouri and Ohio were way behind, too, but farmers in Iowa and Minnesota have had a near perfect planting season.

Futures prices have been inching up since rain stated falling in late April, and by Tuesday had hit $4.50 a bushel on the CBT. Could mean a good deal at the elevator in the fall, but nobody knows for sure. That's why they invented market hedges.

To read the full story, click here:  http://www.kansascity.com/438/story/1196471.html

"An ID system is critically needed," Joyce Bupp told a gathering yesterday in Harrisburg, convened by the USDA to explore sentiment about the National Animal Identification System under consideration by the department. Bupp is a dairy farmer and a corporate board director of Dairy Farmers of America, the giant milk co-op, and also a Lancaster Farming columnist. Her sentiments were echoed by a few and resisted by many at the meeting, according to a report by staff writer Chris Torres in tomorrow's issue. Check it out.

Throw away your pliers, your wrenches, your hammers and your surgical instruments. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMZwa_WtSo8

The Chesapeake Bay has a new friend in Washington. And he's the head guy. President Obama is trying to do a lot of different things in a lot of different areas and nobody knows how any of it's going to work out. The economy, the war(s), health care, the environment, food safety... He picked up a big basket on inauguration day, filled it to the top and I, for one, hope he can carry it home.

And I would say that regardless of his party affiliation. Like most Americans, I think the person at the top is more important than the party in power.

This person in power believes the Chesapeake Bay is a national treasure, and thinks it's time to get it cleaned up. The six states and the District of Columbia, which comprise the bay's watershed, have been cooperating on remedial work to keep pollutants out of the bay for years. Decades, actually. That work has definitely helped, but it hasn't solved the bay's many problems.

On Tuesday, Obama issued an executive order putting the federal government at the head of the cleanup effort. Too much top-down government? Could be. The fact is, though, that the loosely coordinated efforts involving literally hundreds of NGOs, private interests, local governments and state agencies haven't worked.

If the Chesapeake Bay is, as Obama said, a national treasure, and if it is in dire trouble, and if it is too big and too important to allow to fail, doesn't it deserve a bailout? 

Miracle water or something else? I did a story for Saturday's edition about the use of electrolyzed water in dairy sanitation. Roman Fyk, who makes and sells the electrolysis equipment, believes that all you need to sanitize your entire farm operation is the water that comes out of his system - just plain water but tweaked a little bit with a pinch of salt and a jolt of electricity. It's an interesting idea. And compelling. I hope you take the time to read it.

I kept thinking UhOh. UhOh. UhOh... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ficwZQYmRLE