8-19 IAT Steady Dairy

 The Idaho Milk Processors Association recent annual convention in Sun Valley collectively came to the decision that  the third largest dairy state is in a "slow" and "grow,"  mode. I called the Idaho Dairy Commission’s  Cheri Chase for some clarification.  “Milk production has slowed somewhat.  10 to 15 years ago there were more dairies here in the state and more production. We have not seen the amount of growth that we saw 10 years ago in terms of milk production, it has been pretty even. That is a result of prices being paid for input. Prices are incredibly high for feed, fuel costs are high. When I started in this industry 20 years ago, there were 1300 dairy farm families in Idaho and we are now down to about 550 so we have the same number of cows and there was milk growth during that time but it is becoming more and more challenging for dairy farm families to make things work. Interesting that you said the number of dairy farmers has dropped while the number of cows has remained the same. Does that mean that the number of dairy families that survived just increased the number of cows? Yes but just so that people understand, there are still a lot of small farms out there, in fact,  more than half of the farms in Idaho are under 500 cows so there are still a lot of small farms out there.