8-23 IAN Milk Production

 A Capital Press story recently stated,  after the Idaho Milk Processors Association annual convention in Sun Valley, that the third largest dairy production state is at a crossroads.  As it turns out, over the last 10 to 15 years there has been a kind of redistribution of the number of dairy cows and milk produced amongst Idaho dairy families according to the Idaho Dairy Commission’s Cheri Chase, who ought to know, given that she has been in the dairy business for over 20 years. “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, but yes over the years we have seen some larger facilities but the production has remained relatively stable in terms of the amount of milk we are producing versus seeing sudden spurts of growth like we did a number of years ago.