Dairy farmers have failed to keep pace with a 3 percent increase in annual milk consumption, according to Rabobank Groep in the Netherlands, the world's biggest agricultural lender. European warehouses, which had 200,000 tons of milk powder in 2003, are empty, according to Erhard Richarts, dairy expert with the Bonn-based market and price reporting agency ZMP. India's gains will range from 3 percent for milk to 7 percent for processed dairy products, he said. Raghuveera Reddy, agriculture...

As the milk bottling industry has consolidated, the traditional relationship between individual dairy producers and a local bottling plant has eroded. But by this week, when the 106-year-old company was sold to a Massachusetts dairy products firm 12 times its size, Crystal's stature in the local farm landscape had faded. One way that Crystal kept its local contracts in recent years was to offer a premium to farmers to not use the synthetic growth hormone rBST, which some inject into cows...

These days, the dairy leases a Vermont farm with 500 cows and transports the milk to Sharon, where it is processed and bottled the same day as delivery. Still, Parrish admits it's a little odd that he runs a dairy farm without any cows. But it's the milk, processed at the farm and stored in old- fashioned glass bottles, that seems to keep the customers. Anyone who has visited Crescent Ridge Dairy's ice cream stand - a summer tradition for locals - has seen some heifers grazing in the...

Chuck Utecht doubts someone would have jumped the electric fence and tangled with the bulls on their own turf and the distances and damage involved suggests a high-powered rifle was used. The shooter also targeted a calf in a nearby feedlot, but Utecht is more worried about what type of person would gun down a trio of penned animals and think it was fun. Deputies did not find any shell casings and the owners could not think of anyone who would shoot the cattle for no apparent reason....

In the supplemental spending request, the governor also proposed creating a task force to develop strategies for strengthening the Massachusetts dairy industry. The Massachusetts farmer's position in this highly regulated industry has to do with a complicated formula that sets the market prices for milk across the country. CARLISLE -- So far, Mark Duffy is holding onto his 130 cows, but just this winter he saw two more friends sell their stock as economic shifts deepened the woes of the...

California's cheese industry includes artisan and farmstead cheesemakers -- meaning cheese made at a dairy with milk from the dairy's cows -- along with behemoths such as Hilmar, the maker of natural American-style cheeses. California cheese making got a boost back in 1982, when the state's dairy industry had a two-pronged problem: Milk consumption was declining and surplus was building up. Because it takes approximately 10 pounds of milk to make 1 pound of cheese, the milk surplus could...