Monday, February 25, 2019

Wisconsin Dairy

Here's a good  piece on the Wisconsin dairy situation, more in detail than many media reports. Many farmers going out of business, other farmers expanding their herds so the number of farms is way down (close to half in 4 years) but the number of cows is about even.  What strikes me is even though herds have doubled in size, they're still below 200 cows per herd average.  None of the Wisconsin counties are in the top 13 counties in the US in production (most are California), likely mostly because the big dairies (1,000+ ) aren't  in Wisconsin.

I suspect from a birdseye view the same forces which are leading to the big increase in the income of the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent are also leading to the big increase in the size of dairy herds and the big increase in the value of the top companies in the US.  That's just a hunch, without supporting arguments now, maybe later.

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