More milk produced farther from consumers

People are getting more interested in where their food is produced, as well as how it is being produced. Consider the proliferation of farmers’ markets in cities large and small across the country. Some food industry observers see this trend continuing with people wanting to know more about where their food comes from.

We thought of this when we saw the May 2009 issue of Marketing Service Bulletin from the Central Milk Marketing Order office. The article, “Cows versus people” compared milk marketings (federal order plus California) and population figures (dairy production consumption) for the four U.S. time zones. The analysis assumes that dairy product consumption is the same in all time zones and that it amounts to 50 pounds of milk per month . . . 25 pounds for fluid and Class II products and 25 pounds for cheese, butter, and so forth.

For December 2008, the Eastern time zone had 47.8 percent of the population but produced only 30 percent of the milk. That resulted in a deficit of 21.7 pounds per person or 3.1 billions of milk for the month.

The Central time zone was closer to balance with 30.9 percent of the milk and 29 percent of the population. Still, that time zone was deficit 172.9 million pounds of milk for the month.

Taken together, the Eastern and Central time zones were deficit about 3.3 billion pounds of milk for the month.

By contrast, the Pacific time zone has 29 percent of the milk marketings but only 16.5 percent of the population. It had a 1.4 billion-pound surplus for the month. The Mountain time zone had 10.2 percent of the marketings and 6.6 percent of the people.

This underscores the amount of milk (dairy product) that moves from west to east in this country. Many people on both the milk-producing and milk-processing sides of the business are concerned about where milk is being produced and the cost of moving dairy products to market. This a worthy concern as we look at higher transportation costs in the years ahead and the changing way that consumers view their food supply.