Overview of Dairy Industry Sample Clauses

Overview of Dairy Industry. ‌ Dairies are AFOs that produce milk, raise dairy replacement heifers or raise calves for veal. Typically, dairy operations combine milk production and the raising of heifers (immature females) as replacements for mature cows that no longer produce milk economically. However, some milk producers obtain some or all replacement heifers from stand-alone heifer operations. Although some dairies raise veal calves, veal production is typically specialized at operations solely raising veal calves. For several decades, the number of milk producing cows has steadily decreased while the volume of milk produced has continually increased. This increased productivity has been the result of improvements in breeding programs and feeding and management practices. Concurrently, there has been an ongoing consolidation in the dairy industry resulting in fewer but larger farms. Between 1991 and 2007, the number of dairy farms decreased by 58.4 percent, while milk production increase by 23.1 percent. As of the 2007 USDA census of Agriculture, the states with the largest number of dairy operations are Wisconsin (14,900), Pennsylvania (8,700), New York (6,400) and Minnesota (5,400).