This course will explore the concepts driving current food production science (population growth, urbanization, emerging affluence, resource constraints, and underlying biological limits) with the main focus on livestock production. Each of the major food animal species (dairy, swine, beef, and poultry) will be covered in terms of their universal life cycles, constraints to production and emerging societal issues. Throughout the course, we will tackle some difficult and important questions: What are the major health benefits and potential concerns regarding the production and consumption of animal products? How does animal production affect the efficient use of resources and impact our environment? Can cost of production be reduced to meet growing demand for animal products around the globe while maintaining health and safety for both animals and consumers? What are the different types of animal food production systems? Myths and misconceptions surrounding the animal food systems will be discussed. We’ll also look closely at some of the global issues, problems, and challenges in these food systems which scientists, farmers, and veterinarians, are attempting to solve through collaboration. Lectures will be delivered by several experts from the University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine who are intimately involved in the study and advancement of animal production systems. The course is geared towards learners who seek a greater understanding of animal food systems as well as those who might have never visited an animal farm, but have a desire to learn more about where some of our food comes from and issues surrounding sustainability.
Industry Trends in Dairy Production
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From the course by University of Pennsylvania
Feeding the World
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From the lesson
Dairy Production
Welcome to the first week of the course which explores a particular animal production sector. The focus for this module will be dairy. The life cycle of a dairy cow as well as the environmental impact of dairy production will be covered. We'll also explore housing systems, milking technologies, trends and animal welfare issues in the dairy production system. Finally we will address public health concerns in dairy production including hormone use, antibiotic use, and milk safety in the U.S.
Meet the Instructors
Dr. David GalliganProfessor of Animal Health Economics
School of Veterinary Medicine
James FergusonProfessor of Nutrition
School of Veterinary Medicine
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.
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