Feed and Grain, a business-to-business magazine that covers the feed market has a nice feature on the updates and upgrades MFA has installed in the Mexico, Mo. feed mill. The story explains how a new bagging system and robot bag stacker has increased throughput for the facility and helped to reduce working injury.

MFA’s new bagging system delivered on the promise of a 33% reduction in the overall plant labor/labor efficiency gains; the 50% reduction in overall shrink, the loss related to packaging; and a 20% increased throughput rate.

“Technology enhances your competitiveness. As other costs tend to go up, you need to find ways to minimize expenses where you can and improve efficiencies,” says Alan Wessler, vice president of MFA’s feed division.

Read the whole thing here.

Here is a behind-the-scenes look at a new offering that's on the way at your local MFA location. A couple times per year, MFA retail managers bring agricultrual vendors into a trade-show setting. Managers from across MFA's territory gather to work with the vendors to attain volume pricing and other forms of buyer savings. Those products then work through the cooperative to your farm.

At the August Buyers' Market, the Herdsman brand made its debut to MFA. Herdsman is a joint venture among several cooperatives who pool their buying power to get high-quality farm supply products at a reasonable price. Herdsman fencing products are first to hit the MFA system.

The Herdsman brand was conceived by farm product buyers at Tennessee Farmers. Participating cooperatives include: Tennessee Farmers, Alabama Farmers, MFA Incorporated, Heritage Trading and Intermountain Farmers Association. As buyers from these cooperatives negotiate deals with manufacturers, more Herdsman products will be available.

Long-time Today's Farmer columnist, author, musician and humorist Mitch Jayne, 82, died Monday, Aug. 2, 2010, in Columbia. Jayne was the author of five books, a weekly newspaper column published in the rural Ozarks for 20 years, and more than a dozen bluegrass songs recorded by The Dillards. He hosted a radio show in Salem that attracted national attention for its satire, including the “Snake and Tick Market Report,” a regular feature that reported market prices for Hoo-Boy White Dot Crushproof Dry Valley Wonder Ticks and black, copperhead, coachwhip, garter and rattle snakes.

A memorial service is planned for the fall in the Ozarks, the time and place Jayne loved best and never tired of sharing through his stories and music.

Full obituary from Columbia Tribune.

Diana Jayne has a message for all of Mitch's fans here. Scroll down to find it.

Having grown up on raw milk, it's difficult for me to see the attraction of the current raw-milk fad. We never separated ours, so the old Jersey's cream would eventually coagulate and land in your glass with a plop. Never have missed that. And I'm sure dad never really missed milking. The cats did.

But raw milk is in fashion among the localvores, back-to-earthers and various hipsters. It's a fascinating trend to watch. Most fascinating to me is that the regulatory apparatus engendered by food-safety activists as far back as Sinclair Lewis has found new and bewildered subjects. Such standards got their start among "progressives" and were employed to bring commercial processors to heel. Now we discover the regulations are serpentine enough to twist back to the local CSA.