Americans are consuming more dairy. That’s according to a new report from Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets. Vermont Dairy Delivers, commissioned by the Vermont Dairy Promotion Council, explores how the dairy industry has changed within the last decade.
The report includes a number of striking statistics, including this one: In 2023 the average American consumed 661 pounds of dairy products, marking a 40-pound increase from the previous decade and an all-time high since the late 1950s.
Despite the growing market, Vermont’s dairy industry faces major challenges, particularly if you own a small or medium-sized farm.
According to the report’s 2015 predecessor, Milk Matters, Vermont had 868 dairy farms a decade ago.
“We are on par with the rest of the country for seeing farm closures,” said Laura Ginsburg, the Dairy Strategy and Innovation Manager at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture.
Most of the closures were of small- and medium-sized farms. A small dairy farm has fewer than 200 cows, and a medium one has fewer than 700. Only 9 percent of Vermont dairy farms have more than 700 cows.
One thing that hasn’t changed in the last decade is Vermont’s reliance on the dairy industry as the key driver of its agricultural economy. Dairy makes up two-thirds of Vermont’s total agricultural sales.
But with more dairy alternatives on the market, what’s driving consumers to keep buying dairy products? The report cited dairy products such as butter, cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt. Ginsburg also noted that milk consumption has gone up, too. “Healthy fats have rejoined the cultural narrative as a healthy option for consumers, and so whole milk sales are increasing,” she said.
The popularity and revenue-generating possibilities of dairy products is reflected in the growth of Vermont’s dairy processing sector. In the last decade, the number of processors in the state has grown from 95 to 158.
“Some processors are also farm operators,” Ginsburg said. “Many of the processors are either milking their own cows or they’re diverting a small portion of milk from a dairy farm where the the rest of their milk would go to a larger processor.”
The Agency of Agriculture has also conducted some research to understand consumer trends around goat and sheep’s milk. Ginsburg noted that there is more demand in Vermont than there is supply. The dozen or so sheep’s milk processors in Vermont import most of their milk from New York.
Meanwhile, goat milk is also growing in popularity, “as people really start to understand that they’re lactose intolerant, or goat milk just settles better for them,” Ginsburg said.
The Vermont Dairy Delivers report also covers the role of migrant laborers on dairy farms. Of the Vermont dairy farms that were surveyed, 94% reported hiring migrant workers at some point at time. Ginsburg said that 75% of the milk produced in the United States is produced with the support of migrant labor.
“If migrant farm workers were to just disappear, there’s going to be a real problem,” Ginsburg said. “It’s going to be an immediate issue. Vermont will have farms with cows that won’t get milked or fed because we don’t have the labor base of U.S. citizens to do those jobs.”
Ginsburg said farm workers have reported in recent months that they’re less likely to leave the farm because of fear and anxiety that something may happen to them.
Also in this episode, the Assistant Director of Food Safety Consumer Protection at the Agency of Agriculture, Tucker Diego, discussed the impact tariffs are having on local farmers and maple producers. Diego noted that the prices of some Canadian agricultural products like sawdust for animal bedding are going up — even when tariffs don’t apply. “Those suppliers are facing a higher risk of putting their product into the market, and are just uncertain whether a tariff will or won’t be applied,” he said. “We have had reports of price increases across the board, and we are concerned about that trend.”
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