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Background of Dairy Production in the U.S.The first cattle in the western hemisphere arrived with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. Other cows began to arrive along with settlers from Europe and followed the pioneers westward. Until the mid 1850s, the dairy industry in America revolved around the family-owned dairy cow, with little sales of milk or other dairy products outside the family. The dairy industry began to change dramatically in the early 1900s, after a series of developments. Principles of bacteriology that led to improved milk quality and safety by Louis Pasteur with the process of pasteurization; development of breed associations that promoted the genetic selection of cows for their ability to produce milk; the Land Grant act of 1862 that established colleges of agriculture to educate farmers in the scientific principles of breeding, feeding, and management; the centrifugal separator that allowed milk fat to be removed and allowed the manufacture of more products; determination of milk fat content by the Babcock test (named for Professor S. M. Babcock of the University of Wisconsin); and tuberculin testing of dairy herds that eliminated milk as a source of tuberculosis all played a role in the growth of U.S. dairy production.
Better roads enhanced the ability to transport milk to processing plants,
improvements in housing and environment to keep cows more comfortable,
less competition for alternative land uses, and the ability to raise feed
under irrigation has led to a shift in dairy production to Western states.
California surpassed Wisconsin in milk produced in 1993 and in number
of dairy cows in 1998. Presently, there are about 9 million dairy cows
on 900,000 farms in the U.S. California, Wisconsin, New York, Pennsylvania,
and Idaho are the leading dairy producing states (Fig. 3).
Production continues to increase in Idaho, New Mexico and California,
while it is declining in most of the Midwest and Northeast. In the upper
Midwest, dairy farms have been discontinuing production at the rate of
more than three per day over the past five years. The tri-state region
of Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, however, appear to be maintaining or increasing
cow numbers, as the industry reacts to relatively inexpensive feed costs
and access to the high-demand markets for fluid milk in the Southeastern
U.S. Continued growth of the industry is expected in the Eastern Corn
Belt and in the High Plains, just east of the Rocky Mountains. External
pressures on the dairy industry due to environmental concerns will limit
its growth in some areas or force farms to relocate (Fig. 4).
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