June Dairy Month is off to a Jumping Start!  It’s time to toast and drink up MILK’s goodness in every facet of the Worldwide Milkshed!

Please join this young farming couple, Tyler and Alli Davis Kamper, of Tennessee (with some Virginia, NC, and California thrown in) in a toast to:

• Cows
• Farmers
• Processors
• Retailers & Restaurants
• Consumers – and
• Agribusinesses who serve farmers, & the lands which take care of those farmers
• And the jobs and economic activity nourished by milk!

Most dairy industry folks have been really busy with celebrations of all sorts in the past couple days, this writer included, so this post is going to be brief.  The photograph above hits a lot of notes common to today’s milk markets – young farmers, coast-to-coast connections of dairy people, corporate business, and precious soils; all those aspects of any milkshed.

Today, I want to celebrate 20 very special states – states who have designated MILK as their OFFICIAL BEVERAGE!  Is your state on this list?

I was delighted to wake up to a breakfast bar this morning featuring this sight – a refrigerator full of dairy products, which in itself is a celebration of the Worldwide Milkshed.

Every product in this fridge in Cookeville, TN is an illustration of the Dairy Industry’s collective scope:

• Hampton in Cookeville, TN  (this is a traveling society, myself included!)
• Yoplait Yogurt processed in one of the world’s largest yogurt plants in nearby Murfreesboro, TN (both the Greek and the regular yogurt)
• Prairie Farms milk bottled in Somerset, KY  – milk from farmers I know in KY and a milk cooperative based in the Midwest.
• Dannon Oikos Yogurt processed in Utah, and likely sourced from a single farm contracted to Dannon / Danone (a French global dairy giant)
• Jobs for processors, marketers, farmers, and truck drivers all along that path!

And no June Dairy Month ‘first post’ is complete until we recognize the bovine ladies who make this month possible – the cows themselves.  Milk, that wonderful elixir of nourishment and great taste, comes from a variety of breeds who due to a gene package from the Good Lord above can process almost any feedstuff into creamy, delicious milk – HE does provide!  And from that white milk a huge economic chain is launched that provides jobs and feeds economies in a very big way.

See you later – I’m off to another Cow Celebration!

Drink up the Magic of Milk with Tyler and Alli!