SAVANNAH, Ga. — The three-day Georgia Dairy Conference — one of the nation’s premier dairy events — will be held here at the Marriott Savannah Riverfront Hotel on January 19, 20, 21. The event allows producers to advance their knowledge, connect with fellow producers and industry leaders, and discover new perspectives on issues that are important to the dairy industry. Registration for the conference is open, please visit: http://gadairyconference.com/registration.
One key component of the Georgia Dairy Conference includes the general sessions, featuring leading national experts and researchers from across the dairy industry. Read below to learn about four of the speakers for the conference.
• Calvin Covington has spent the past 50 years working for dairy farmer organizations in various capacities. He retired from Southeast Milk, Inc. as chief executive officer in 2010. Prior to joining SMI, Covington spent 23 years working for the American Jersey Cattle Association, where he served as executive secretary and CEO.
Covington holds a B.S. degree from N.C. State and a M.S. degree from Ohio State. His recognitions include: 2010 National Dairy Shrine Guest of Honor, 2003 World Dairy Expo Industry Person of the Year, and 2002 World Jersey Cattle Bureau Distinguished Service Award.
Covington is very well known for his work in milk marketing. He has authored milk marketing articles for various national and international publications; testified at Federal Order and Congressional hearings; and spoken to dairy industry groups throughout the U.S. and in over 30 countries.
• Corey Geiger is the lead dairy economist for CoBank, one of the largest providers of credit to the dairy industry. Prior to joining the Farm Credit System, Geiger brought the best scientific, managerial, and policymaking information to the world’s dairy community as an editor for Hoard’s Dairyman for nearly three decades. He led the launch of the publication’s fourth language edition, Hoard’s Dairyman China and traveled to 48 states and four continents covering dairy farming and dairy processing.
In other industry service, Geiger was president of National Dairy Shrine, the Wisconsin Holstein Association, and Holstein Association USA. He served on the board of directors for both the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding and World Dairy Expo where he chairs its Education Committee. This past February, Corey became a board advisor for the U.S. Farmers and Ranchers in Action. He also serves on the planning committee for the Western Dairy Management Conference.
• Glynn Tonsor is a professor in the Dept. of Agricultural Economics at Kansas State University (KSU). He grew up on a farrow-to-finish swine farm in Monroe City, Missouri and earned his B.S. degree at Missouri State University and Ph.D. from KSU. He was a faculty member at Michigan State University from May 2006 to March 2010 when he joined the KSU faculty.
Tonsor has broad interests and experiences which span many issues throughout the meat-livestock supply chain. Through active research, engaged outreach with industry, and first-hand knowledge with livestock production, Glynn has economic expertise in an array of topics of economic importance to Kansas, U.S. and global stakeholders.
Tonsor has over 118 peer-reviewed publications, provided over 300 presentations to an in-person audience exceeding 37,000 attendees, conducted numerous educational webinars, and written a multitude of non-technical publications.
• Miel Hosten’s work with a unique combination of data and dairy science in an academic profile was the main reason he ended up at Cornell in January, 2024, as an associate professor of Digital Dairy Management and Data Analytics at the Department of Animal Science. His lab focuses on developing data-driven dairy science and eventually contributing to sustainable food production systems from a global perspective.
He received his MSc in Veterinary Medicine at the Ghent University (Belgium) in 2006 and was awarded his PhD in Veterinary Medicine in 2012. He developed a strong personal vision around the need for more data-driven dairy science through research and industry collaborations. After he finished his PhD in 2013, a prototype of an analytical data pipeline and data warehouse architecture he had developed was acquired by Delaval, which later merged to become DairyDataWarehouse.com.
