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2011 a very profitable year for Wisconsin dairy producers

Final numbers from the National Ag Statistics Service verify last year was a very profitable year for dairy producers in Wisconsin. 25.838 billion pounds of milk was utilized in the Badger State in 2011 with an average price of $20.30 per hundredweight. That works out to $5.25 billion in cash receipts from marketings. If you add in the value of milk used for home consumption, gross producer income was $5.249 billion last year.

This was the first time in the last five years that producer income fully recovered from the economic downturn of 2008. Gross producer income went from $4.96 billion in 2007 to $4.5 billion in 2008 down to $3.2 billion in 2009 recovering to $4.1 billion in 2010. Milk production did increase slightly each of the five years but the price per hundredweight varied from the high of $20.30 last year to $13.10 in 2009. On a monthly basis, the lowest all-milk price in the period was $11.30 in June of 2009 while the highest price was $22.60 in July of 2011.