This is the book of abstracts of the 16th International Conference on Production Diseases in Farm Animals, held in Wageningen, the Netherlands, June 20-23 2016.

The failing economics of the traditional small dairy farm, the rise of the factory mega-farm with its resultant pollution and disease, and the uncertain future of milk

This three-volume handbook includes state-of-the-art surveys in different areas of neoclassical production economics. Volumes 1 and 2 cover theoretical and methodological issues only. Volume 3 includes surveys of empirical applications in different areas like manufacturing, agriculture, banking, energy and environment, and so forth.

All over the world, governments play a part in the milk business for compelling economic reasons and not, as many assert, just because dairy farmers are numerous and organized. This book examines the role of federal, state, and local governments in the dairy economy of the United States, where major public involvement in industry began during the Great Depression. Dr. Manchester considers the conditions in the 1930s that led to government involvement, the changes that have occurred in the industry and the public role since then, and the prospects for the 1980s and beyond. He also analyzes possible alternative public dairy policies for the present and the rest of the decade. Many things have changed, points out Dr. Manchester, but the fundamental conditions that led to public involvement in the dairy industry still exist.

In Land of Milk and Money, Alan I Marcus examines the establishment of the dairy industry in the United States South during the 1920s. Looking specifically at the internal history of the Borden Company—the world’s largest dairy firm—as well as small-town efforts to lure industry and manufacturing south, Marcus suggests that the rise of the modern dairy business resulted from debates and redefinitions that occurred in both the northern industrial sector and southern towns. Condensed milk production in Starkville, Mississippi, the location of Borden’s and the South’s first condensery, so exceeded expectations that it emerged as a touchstone for success. Starkville’s vigorous self-promotion acted as a public relations campaign that inspired towns in Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas to entice northern milk concerns looking to relocate. Local officials throughout the South urged farmers, including Black sharecroppers and tenants, to add dairying to their operations to make their locales more attractive to northern interests. Many did so only after small-town commercial elites convinced them of dairying’s potential profitability. Land of Milk and Money focuses on small-town businessmen rather than scientists and the federal government, two groups that pushed for agricultural diversification in the South for nearly four decades with little to no success. As many towns in rural America faced extinction due to migration, northern manufacturers’ creation of regional facilities proved a potent means to boost profits and remain relevant during uncertain economic times. While scholars have long emphasized northern efforts to decentralize production during this period, Marcus’s study examines the ramifications of those efforts for the South through the singular success of the southern dairy business. The presence of local dairying operations afforded small towns a measure of independence and stability, allowing them to diversify their economies and better weather the economic turmoil of the Great Depression.

How and why does Denmark have one of the richest, most equal, and happiest societies in the world today? Historians have often pointed to developments from the late nineteenth century, when small peasant farmers worked together through agricultural cooperatives, whose exports of butter and bacon rapidly gained a strong foothold on the British market. This book presents a radical retelling of this story, placing (largely German-speaking) landed elites—rather than the Danish peasantry—at center stage. After acquiring estates in Denmark, these elites imported and adapted new practices from outside the kingdom, thus embarking on an ambitious program of agricultural reform and sparking a chain of events that eventually led to the emergence of Denmark’s famous peasant cooperatives in 1882. A Land of Milk and Butter presents a new interpretation of the origin of these cooperatives with striking implications for developing countries today.

Tropical Dairy Farming is a manual designed for use by dairy production advisors working in tropical areas, especially in South-East Asia. It aims to increase the productivity of small holder dairy farmers in the humid tropics by improving the feeding management of their livestock. It shows how to provide dairy cows with cost-effective feeds that match small holder farming systems and discusses the major obstacles to improving feeding management in the humid tropics. The author shows the benefits and drawbacks of various feed components and the calculation of balanced diets based mainly on forages combined with some supplementary feeding. Diseases and problems associated with unbalanced diets are also covered, as well as important information on growing and conserving quality forages as silage. The book draws on examples from a variety of countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, East Timor and the Philippines.

This comprehensive book integrates new technology and concepts that have been developed in recent years to manage dairy farms in a profitable manner. The approach to the production of livestock and quality milk is multidisciplinary, involving nutrition, reproduction, clinical medicine, genetics, pathology, epidemiology, human resource management and economics. The book is structured by the production cycle of the dairy cow covering critical points in cow management. Written and edited by highly respected experts, this book provides a thoroughly modern and up-to-date resource for all those involved in the dairy industry.

Dairy Farm, Ration, Housing, Livestock management, Care manufacturing process, clean milk production, Dairy cattle economics, Diseases of animals, suppliers of equipment, packaging of milk.