Posted: 09.20.2011

To the average consumer - they might think that Wisconsin's dairy industry just keeps chugging along with few challenges.  That's really not the case.

Monday the Wisconsin Ag Statistical Service did confirm that overall Wisconsin milk production for August went up - but it's almost a matter of necessity.  The August figures showed Wisconsin increased 1.2 percent in 2011 production over year-ago figures, but it doesn't speak to the costs Wisconsin livestock owners are facing.

Milk produced per cow actually slipped this August versus a year ago by more then 4 percent.  The other factor that consumers may not notice in these production figures are the escalating costs of livestock feed. At a recent hearing focused in on future dairy policy direction, Dairy Farmers of America said that extreme volatility in milk and feed prices took its tool in 2008 and 2009, and forced not only producers out of dairying - but for those that remained, it cost them a generation's worth of equity to stay farming.

DFA also predicts that as corn prices continue to rise - milk prices paid to farmers will shrink - compounding stress.

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