The Economics of the Dairy Industry

So, you want to go into business as a dairy farmer? No, need to get up too early? Then you may simply be interested in the economics of making milk. Here are some facts and figures from Germany and the United States.

• India is the number one milk producing country in the world today, followed by the United States and Russia. Germany is number 4 and Canada number 11.
• As a block, the European Union produces the most milk. Germany is the largest milk and dairy producing country in the EU.
• In Germany, a dairy cow costs approximately 1,000 Euro or $ 1,500 (varying on breed and sex) in 2007.
• Three days after the birth of the calf, a cow is milked for approximately ten months. In this time, it turns out a milk quantity of 6,537 liters <141.85 gallons> on average.
• This quantity to covers the drinkable milk of 98 people in Germany per year.
• Germany has a cow population of almost 14 million (and roughly 81 million people). Those animals produce approximately 28 million tons of milk per year; those are roughly 20 billion liters or 5 billion gallons of milk.
• America's cow population numbers 96 million (and 301 million people). The animals produce up 78 million t. milch in a year.
• Milk production is up 1.2 percent since June last year, in 2007, 23 of the major States in U.S. the production of milk totaled 14.2 billion pounds.
• In 2007 as many as 8.29 million cows resided in 23 of the major States, this is 19,000 more than June 2006 and 2000 more than this past May.
• A single cow's production has risen 16 pounds from June 2006; in June 2008 the average was 1,713 pounds.

Following are the prices of some dairy products in 2008: