The trend of fewer and larger is nothing new to U.S. dairy farms, and was confirmed in a recent USDA report to be continuing.
“Structure, Costs, and Technology Used on U.S. Dairy Farms” was published recently by the USDA’s Economic Research Service. It parses data from the turn of the century to 2022, addressing topics including farm diversification, geographic location, herd size, use of advanced technology, and cost of production.
Among the highlights of the study are:
- Consistent with long-term trends, the number of U.S. dairy farms has fallen (while milk production has risen), with larger dairy farms emerging that produce more milk per cow.
- Moderate shifts in the location of dairy farms occurred between 2002 and 2022, with Texas and Idaho gaining production share and California losing production share.
- Dairy farm usage has trended upward for several advanced technologies, management practices, and production systems: automatic take-offs, computerized milking systems, use of a milking parlor, and milking cows three or more times daily. The use of bovine somatotropin (bST) has decreased.
- Over the period of 2000-2022, the average U.S. dairy farm covered operating costs in most years, operating and ownership costs in about half the years, and total economic costs in only two years.
- In 2021, larger dairy farms, on average: (1) were more specialized in dairy production; (2) were greater adopters of more advanced technologies, management practices, and production systems; (3) incurred lower costs per unit of milk sold; (4) had higher purchased feed costs, lower home-grown feed costs, and lower grazed feed costs per unit of milk sold; and (5) had higher paid labor costs relative to unpaid labor costs per unit of milk sold.
The full report can be accessed here.
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