Where the Cows Are

Hoard's Dairyman maps the state of the dairy industry.  First, where milk production is changing:

Chart: Green= Largest increase = 2,596,898 kg/km2
Rust= Largest decline = 295,363 kg/km2

 Milk has moved away from cities between 2001 and 2011. Red areas indicate less milk in 2011 than 2001, green areas mean more and a buff color designates a neutral milk region.
Almost every region where you see a dark red area indicating a sharp decline in production has a large and growing population center nearby. For example, Seattle, El Paso, New Orleans, Baltimore-Washington and Minneapolis. It is also worth noting that the vast majority of the country has a pink hue, indicating a more general loss of milk production.
The milk production growth that has occurred over the recent decade has been in a dozen relatively concentrated areas. In the Great Lakes region, Western New York has certainly grown. Michigan has a couple of distinct regions in the Thumb and central portion of the state. Wisconsin shows more milk in the bottom two-thirds of the state with the heaviest gains in the eastern portion.
Ohio and Indiana both have growth pockets in the northwest corners of each state. And Minnesota and South Dakota have a shared growth region along the I-29 highway corridor. More toward the west, eastern New Mexico and the Texas Panhandle have had significant growth as well as a couple of concentrations north of there in Kansas and Colorado. Arizona has a growth area as does Oregon and Washington state in the high desert regions. And, of course, Idaho really stands out.

Now, a map of where the cows are:

 Each dot on this map represents 1,500 cows. Generally speaking, the country’s growth pockets are taking cows from somewhere else; not many areas are the same as they were in cow numbers 10 or 20 years ago.

 
The U.S. continues to produce milk in all states — even Alaska and Hawaii. But the trends seem to show that dairy is concentrating into ever more dense pockets of production. The Southeastern quadrant of the country is about 40 billion pounds of milk net deficit annually and growing more so every year. Some of this is attributable to population pressures, but much can be blamed on genetic and management advances in milk yields that are hard to be realized in hot and humid climates. And, when milk supplies dwindle below a critical threshold, the loss of dairy infrastructure just makes milk production even more expensive.

I never guessed there would be so much diary in the Texas Panhandle and New Mexico.  Until I found out about the Milk Can trophy, I didn't realize that Idaho was such a huge producer