Half of US milk produced by big herds

Herds of more than 1,000 dairy cows now produce 50% of milk in the USA.

The overall number of dairy operations declined by 4% to 60,000 in 2011 compared to 2010, but the number of herds with more than 1,000 cows increased, according to a report from the US Department of Agriculture and National Statistics Service.

In 2010 there were 1,680 US herds with more than 1,000 cows, but this number increased to 1,750 in 2011.

The biggest increase was in producers with more than 2,000 cows, up 5.3% in 2011. Farms with fewer than 200 cows saw the biggest fall, slipping 4.7% from 55,200 to 52,600 in 2011.

For the UK, RPA data shows a similar trend. In the 2000/01 milk year, 17,663 dairy farmers held less than 0.5m litres of milk quota, equivalent to a herd of less than 100 cows and accounting for 30% of total quota.

A decade later, in 2010/11, there were only 5,765 dairy farmers with less than 0.5m litres of quota, making up just 12% of total quota.

In the UK, herds holding more than 2m litres of quota accounted for 29% of total quota in 2010/11. The number of dairy farmers producing more than 2m litres, equivalent to more than 250 cows, more than tripled to 1,338 over the same period.

This figure, however, was likely to be much higher, with many farms producing milk without full quota cover, said DairyCo.