(Radio Iowa) – Milk production is up across the U-S and worldwide, which has had some benefit to Iowa dairy producers. Iowa State University dairy expert Fred Hall says the increase is linked to fewer younger cows known as heifers going into the milking rotation. “What we found is, because the price of heifers are so expensive, people are keeping cows longer. And one of them unique things, more mature cows gives more milk than a heifer,” he says. Hall says the U-S has benefited from the increase in milk production. ” So if you have more of the commodity, that means the price is going to go down. And this is really good for the United States the last year because we were the cheapest dairy product in the world, so we sold a lot more,” Hall says.

He says as other countries produce more milk their prices go down and that impacts U-S dairy exports. Hall says that could impact milk prices and people will look for cheaper products. “Does it mean that they will quit buying dairy? Very unlikely. You know, a young family with children will continue to buy milk, but you may see instead of buying organic or grass fed, they may say, okay, we will have to buy commodity milk or we will go to two percent,” he says.

Hall says the same thing is happening with butter, as imported butter prices will drop and that could impact domestic sales. “The season for baking is coming up, we’ll know in January what that’s going to be. So yeah, we’re in a state of flux and I think a big part of it is that balance between production and consumption,” he says. Hall says the Iowa dairy industry is doing okay now, though the number of dairies has dropped.

“We’ve kept the same number of cows, fewer dairymen. And we know that as we have this abundance of feed we’re getting just a little more milk, and I believe it’s about a pound a day per cow more. And that’s significant. So Iowa is placed well,” Hall says. Hall says Iowa has the processing available to handle the milk produced or to add a little more, which is good. He says much of the processed milk in Iowa goes to cheese production.