Farmers, banker, researcher explain economics of milking cows

From Marin Bozic’s perspective, there are three ways to fix the dairy industry: Americans need to consume more cheese and milk, the county’s exports of milk need to grow, or, frankly, dairy farmers need to milk  fewer cows.Bozic, an assistant professor of applied economics who studies dairy foods marketing and economics at the University of Minnesota, said dairies have been economically upside down for the past five years, and there are plenty of macro-level reasons why.For starters, he said, “In the United States, productivity per cow is growing faster than population size."Each year, dairy farmers are getting 1.5 percent to 2 percent more milk per cow, whereas the U.S. population is growing at just less than 1 percent annually.Until about 10 to 12 years ago, Bozic said, Minnesota was not an export superpower on the global dairy market. Bu that has changed, and dairies saw the benefit. But now, even with exports continuing to grow, though at a slower pace, it’s not enough to put the U.S. dairy farmer in the black.