Homestead Creamery Inc. started a brand awareness campaign that has turned into an East Coast educational tour.

A recently published study in the journal Circulation discusses how whole milk may promote cardiometabolic health.

Last year 91,000 cows on Virginia’s dairy farms produced more than 208 million gallons of milk for beverages, butter, cream, ice cream and other products. The average American ate 8.5 pounds of ice cream, 8.1 pounds of Cheddar cheese and 10.4 pounds of yogurt in 2013. Obviously, dairy is a big deal, and Virginia’s dairy farm families take their work seriously.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced April 12 that dairy farms participating in the Margin Protection Program can now update their production history when an eligible family member joins the operation.

Virginia’s dairy industry faces a tough year ahead. “It’s going to be a tough year for the dairy sector with probably the lowest prices since 2010,” predicted Dr. John Anderson, American Farm Bureau Federation’s deputy chief economist. 

The Flory family is farming futuristically with robotic milking stalls and a closed-loop flush system that allows them to recycle and help the environment.

Virginia’s dairy industry accounted for about $2.3 billion in economic output in the commonwealth last year and employed nearly 8,000 people.

Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have created a 3-D printed “smart cap” for milk cartons that detects signs of spoilage.

Montgomery County dairy and sweet corn producers Casey and Stacey Phillips of Dry Valley Farms participated in the Dairy Industry’s #MilkTruth campaign this past winter and received mixed messages.

A study of the U.S. milk supply by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration shows little evidence of drug residues in milk.