The announcement that Daisy will be building a $627 million dairy processing plant in Boone will translate to more than just added jobs and increased financial investment in the community.
It will mean more cows. A lot more cows.
Daisy, which will manufacture sour cream, cottage cheese and other milk-based products at the new plant, will need the output of an estimated 43,000 dairy cows to meet its daily production requirements, said Dan Culhane, president of the Ames Chamber of Commerce, who works with the city of Boone on economic development.
Culhane said projects like the Daisy development are often referred to as having a “multiplier effect” on the economy because of the number of sectors they can impact. Or as he likes to put it, the “tail effect.”
“I prefer to call it the tail effect because the tail on this project is so long it can reinvigorate the dairy industry here when you think of the vets and feed and all of the other supplies needed for that many cows,” Culhane said.
Speaking at a meeting on Friday where the Iowa Economic Development Authority approved millions of dollars in public incentives for the plant, Brenda Dryer, executive director of the Boone County Economic Development Growth Corp., said she was looking forward to the dairy stampede.
“I’m excited to see the ripple effect through agriculture and when you add that many new cows into the economy,” Dryer said.
Iowa dairy cow population could increase by almost a fifth
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2022 Agricultural Census, released earlier this year, found that Iowa has 238,000 milk cows on 1,016 farms, mostly concentrated in northeast and northwest Iowa. The addition of 43,000 dairy cows would represent about an 18% increase.
The census also reported annual Iowa milk sales worth $1.33 billion.
A 2020 analysis of Iowa’s dairy industry by Iowa State University placed the economic value of a single dairy cow at $25,495 a year, meaning the impact of adding the cows Daisy needs would amount to more than $1 billion annually. An earlier study by Iowa State calculated that every 10 dairy cows support one full-time job ― amounting to more than 4,000 positions.
The analysis reported that Iowa dairy farming and manufacturing in 2020 had an overall output of $5.5 billion with a labor income of $891 million. Dairy product manufacturing accounted for 37,578 jobs with a labor income of $266 million and output of nearly $2.9 billion.
“We are excited about the opportunity Daisy has to expand opportunities for our dairy farmers and support the economy with more jobs,” said Mariah Busta, executive director of the Iowa State Dairy Association.
Busta said Iowa ranks 11th among the states for dairy production and that the industry often is overlooked among the agricultural products that Iowa ranks first in corn, eggs and especially pigs ― almost 24 million of them, dwarfing the dairy herd.
“It’s easy not to think about dairy in the forefront, but our industry has a huge impact on Iowa,” she said, adding that the new plant will put processing closer for many dairy operations and will allow some of them to consider expansion.
Culhane said the Daisy plant will be “transformational” and particularly beneficial to rural Iowa.
“When you talk about this plant to dairy producers in the area, you should see the light in their eyes,” Culhane said.
And you can probably be sure more than a few of them will give their cows a popular bovine name: Daisy.
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