BUSINESS OF FARMING
B Y J E S S I C A K E LT O N
Drink Your Milk!
“Drink your milk.” That was probably a phrase that you heard as a child and/or something you told your children. Milk has been called “nature’s most perfect food” for providing essential vitamins and minerals. In fact, the 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend three servings of dairy products a day for ages 9 and up. Milk has probably been a part of your diet for many years, but the market for dairy products is changing. Figure 1 shows what happened to the dairy product availability/consumption in the U.S. from 1997 to 2017. It needs to be noted that there are two different scales. The left scale is in pounds and represents cheese. The blue bars represent fluid milk and cream with a scale of 100 pounds. This is per capita availability which is considered a proxy for consumption. The fluid
milk and cream segment, combined with the cheese segment of dairy products, accounts for approximately 85% of the dairy product availability. First the good news: The cheese availability has increased over 30% from 29.9 pounds in 1997 up to 39.1
June 2020
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