Quite a picture of the changing face of America’s dairy production from the annual Farms, Land in Farms and Livestock Operations report from USDA. An ever increasing amount of the nation’s milk supply is coming from larger farms, 31 percent of the nation’s milk supply now comes from herds of 2,000 head or more compared to 19.9 percent just five years ago. The number of farms with 2,000 or more cows increased from 495 in 2004 to 740 in 2009. On the other end of the spectrum, 16.4 percent of the nation’s milk production came from herds milking less than 100 cows compared to 22.5 percent in 2004. The number of herds under 100 cows dropped by 1,800 in the five-year period falling from 63,365 to 49,200 herds.
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This is a result of various policies from the federal government. First we have our farm bill which facilates the sale of feed grains at below cost of production (indirect subsidy to mega dairies)a liberal immigration policy which provides dirt cheap labor and increases burden on public and private welfare programs (another indirect subsidy to mega-dairies) and every time there is a milk surplus the policy offered up is herd retirement programs such as CWT to, in effect, bribe small family dairies into into going out of business.