I'd like to talk a little bit about some of the industry trends that we're seeing in dairy production medicine. This includes the United States and then also globally. So some of the objectives I have for this talk are to talk about some of the trends in dairy production. So we're going to look at some of the historical and current trends, and then also for the United States and globally. We're going to look specifically at animal numbers, farm size, milk production and then how this is funneling into intensification. Just as a broad overview of the United States dairy production industry trend, what we've seen from 1950 to 2014 is an increase in milk per cow per year. And then the total volume of milks produced and sold, and then we've seen an increase in cows per farm. What we've seen a decrease in the total number of cows in the United States. So this is a visual analytic, and what we're looking at on screen right now is the number of cows in the year 1950. And the milk per cow per year in 1950 was 5,314 pounds produced per cow, per year. There were 22 million dairy cows in the United States in 1950. And the total amount shipped then was 117 billion pounds of milk. And our average farm size in 1950 averaged 6 cows per farm. We're going to start the analytic in which we'll see here as it plays through is milk per cow per year increasing, the total cow numbers in the United States decreasing. The complete milk sold per year increasing and then the cows per farm increasing. So fast forward to the year 2014, and you can see the milk per cow per year has increased over 22,000 pounds per cow. The number of dairy cows has decreased by more than half, as there's now 9.3 million dairy cows in the United States. Total milk shipped has almost doubled to 206 billion pounds per year and the average farm size now, cows per farm is 157 cows per farm. The graph on the screen depicts in the year 2012 there was still almost 50,000 dairy farms in the United States with less than 100 cows. That as a huge decrease from 1992, when there were around 135,000 farms with less than 100 cows. The number of farms has also followed this downward trend, which farms less than 100 cows, accounted for 17% of roughly the 9.2 million dairy cows in the United States, which is down 49% from 1992. Over that same period of time, 1992 to 2012, farms with at least 1,000 cows have more than tripled total farm numbers to 1,807 farms. At the same time, these farms that had greater than 1,000 cows have begun to account for a more and more cows of the total population. So these larger farms with more than 1,000 cows account for 49% of all the cows in the United States. And this is up 10% from 1992. So what this shows is we've seen a shift to larger scale farms that house a greater proportion of the dairy cows in the United States and we've seen a downward decline of total number of farms and less smaller farms. The next graph, this further demonstrates the decrease in costs of production as the size of the dairy farm increases. The shift to the larger farm is mostly driven by the economics, and you see that on this graph. So the total economic cost we see, which is the red line on the graph, decreases by nearly 60% for farms, when comparing farms with less than 50 cows to farms with greater than 1,000 cows. So the cost of production is much higher for these smaller dairy farms. And the main reason for this is because the fixed cost of the larger dairy, such as land, and management strategies, and tools, is spread across a larger proportion of cows. Also driving this metric is the average output on larger dairies is substantially higher than the smaller dairy farms. And that is what's seen on the green line. And then what goes hand in hand with that is the total operating cost for the dairy is smaller per cow when you look at larger dairy farms. The next graph illustrates the number of cows in United States and it really provides a projection looking ahead to the year 2020. Where do we think we're going with the United States' dairy industry? The tan line on the graph show the decrease of the total number of dairy cows. With a small growth period between 2005 and 2008, when we had really good mill prices in the United States, 2009, 2010 had a decrease in ml price and since we saw people leaving the dairy industry, and they sold their cows. So what we're expecting moving ahead to the year 2020 is that the number of dairy cows will normalize somewhere around that 9 million number. I'd like to shift now and talk about some of the global trends in dairy production. I think it's really important to lay a foundation as to why we are as an industry even trying to increase yield and production. The graphic on the screen gives some estimates looking ahead to 2025, and the milk demand that we expect to see from the global population. The bar graph with the tan line shows the anticipated increase, or demand, for dairy products per person. This typically grows 1 to 3%. The middle graphic shows the population in million of people and we show that increasing continually due to increase through the year 2025. And then the N graphic with the solid blue, shows our anticipated milk consumption per capita, continually to increase. And that shifts with the increasing global population in the demand for high quality protein in milk protein. Next, I like to look at a dairy trade perspective and this is FAO data and it shows the milk surpluses and deficits globally. And the green circles mostly show that we have a milk surplus in different areas of the world. So if you look at the United States, portions of South America, the European Union and also Australia shows we actually run a positive milk surplus. Looking at the rest of the world globally, there actually is a milk deficit, and that is what is driving this demand for milk protein globally. On the screen now, what we have is the map that we looked at from the previous slide which shows the milk surplus and deficit, and that is up in the upper right hand corner. The larger graphic which is right in front of you, shows regions of the world and shows the cows per farm. So regions of the world which are generally thought to be more in a milk deficiency, typically have smaller herds. And these areas on the image are different shades of tan. So those images, those countries have farms that are less than ten cows, and are in a milk deficient type area. When you look at the green areas, different shades of green, on this map, such as the United States, South America, and Australia, they're darker green in color, they're actually in a milk surplus. But they also have larger number of cows per farm which actually has more production leading to their milk surplus. Globally as we look across the average herd size is 2.4 cows per herd. Compare that to the United States where currently it's 157 cows per farm. In the upper right hand corner is number of cows per farm. That's what we just visited. What we have in the center is actual number of dairy farms. So looking at this, the areas that are actually deficient in milk production globally are shaded in green. That's where the number of dairy farms is actually increasing, versus if you look at the United States and South America, some of those countries we talked about previously that are actually have a surplus of milk. Their total number of farms are actually decreasing. So the biggest bloom or biggest growth right now is in that South East Asian region where they are very deficient in milk protein. There's two different graphs on here. And the first graph on the left gives you an idea of global milk production. And I've omitted the United States dairy production from this to do a true global projection. And see looking from the year roughly 1961 going to 2013 which is the upper tan line that has continued to increase, and globally the blue line, the cow numbers have increased as well. And this is using some of the FAO data. And then looking ahead to United States milk production, that's the graph on the right hand side, milk has continued to increase but actually cow numbers have decreased. So this is the biggest difference between these two graphs as far as globally and in the United States, milk production continues to increase, however the United States is actually decreasing in cow numbers. So the United States is increasing their production based on getting more yield per cow, which is some of the economic drivers that makes farms successful. On a global standpoint, they're increasing milk production through adding more cows. To summarize some of the United States and global dairy production trends that we've been talking about, in the United States, there's been a decrease in cow and farm numbers. And this has been a trend that's continued from 1950 and is currently ongoing. We are seeing an increase in larger farms, and then we're also seeing an increase in milk yield per cow. This is the main driver of the intensification and the shift to larger scale farms. We can produce larger amounts of milk more economically, and that's what's leading to these larger commercial dairy operations. Globally, we're using an increase in cow numbers and an increase in farm numbers to meet that deficit. So smaller farms are continuing to predominate. And we're using smaller farms with less cows to make up for that deficit. And that's how, globally, milk yield is increasing.
