The numbers behind the US and Australia’s dairy decline

In the last 25 years the number of dairy farms in Australia and in the US has dropped by about 70 per cent, so what does the future hold?

Dairy farm numbers in the United States declined by more than a third in the past five years, the latest American farm census has revealed.

The United States Department of Agriculture confirmed there were 36,024 dairy farms across the economic superpower at the 2022 census, down 34 per cent on the 2017 figure of 54,599 farms.

When Bill Clinton was in the White House, the USA boasted more than 125,000 dairy farms at the time of the 1997 farm census — meaning the latest national dairy farm numbers represent a 70 per cent cut in the past quarter century.

By comparison, Australia’s dairy farms have fallen from 12,896 to 4163 operations between 2000 and 2013 — also representing a 70 per cent cut nationwide.

Irish farm analyst Mike Brady said the shift away from the family farming model to industrial-scale dairy operations has also occurred in other western nations, but not to the same extent in the United States.

Mr Brady was a guest speaker at Australian Dairy Conference, which wrapped up in Melbourne last week.

“American dairy has seen the biggest shift from smaller, family operations to larger scale dairies and that has sped up in the last decade,” he said.

“Smaller farms are bought by larger neighbours and become larger again- that’s not new news but the speed at which its occurring is.

“That trend has been seen in Australia I understand, but less so back in my home country (Ireland) or other European countries where there are different geographic and economic factors that restrict or encourage smaller farms.”

ST Genetics chief executive Juan Moreno was also in Melbourne last week as a guest speaker at the Australian Dairy Conference.

Based in the Texas city of College Station, Mr Moreno said American dairy herd sizes had grown significantly in the past decade.

“On average, American dairy operations are larger than Australian (dairy herds). But I understand from talking (to people at the conference), that the scale of the average Australian dairy farm has also grown a lot in the past five to 10 years,” Mr Moreno said.

Across the United States, there were 1.9 million farms in 2022 according to the recently-released census, down about 7 per cent from 2.04 million in 2017.

The average American farm size rose from 441 acres (178 hectares) in 2017 to 463 acres (187 hectares) in 2022.

US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack called the survey “a wake-up call” at an event at the USDA headquarters last week.

“This survey (asks) the critical question of whether as a country, are we OK with losing that many farms,” he said.