01/10/08 Dairy farm changes

Washington Ag January 10, 2008 There were only five percent as many farms with milk cows operating in the U.S. in 2005 as there were in 1964. If that rate of decline in the number of dairies were to continue for 12 more decades, the entire market for milk in the U.S. could be supplied by just 10 firms. Those are some of the kinds of numbers Washington State University economist Richard Shumway reported on at a recent WSU outlook conference. He sums up some of the details from a report on the changing structure of U.S. dairy farming. Shumway: "The dairies that in 1992 had the highest ten percent of agriculture receipts grew at the most rapid rate of any of the other deciles of farm size. Dairies diversified over time into other commodity production. And the farm sizes that diversified most rapidly were the medium sized farms and the largest farms diversified less rapidly." Shumway says the results for Washington were very similar. Tomorrow, public policy implications. I'm Bob Hoff.