With the world in economic recovery Tulare County dairymen are finally getting some relief on improved milk prices.Meanwhile demand for milk from the nation’s number one dairy county is surprisingly strong.This month USDA said US dairy exports were up 52% in October with butter exports up 137%.
“It seems like we are doing something right with more milk powder sales going to export than to the domestic market domestic market for the first time in 2013” says John Moons, dairyman and board member of California Dairies Inc – based in Visalia.
The cooperative is making a $55 million dollar investment in the Plaza Drive plant’s third milk powder evaporator over the next few months with a hearing in front of the city planning commission this week.
“On top of that – our butter sales are best ever” says Moons noting that the long time marketing battle to get consumers to select butter over margarine is getting some help from the FDA worried about trans fats in food. Butter has high saturated fat but no transfats.
Increasingly, consumer are going for all-natural butter, especially this time of the year. U.S. per capita consumption of margarine in 2000 was 8.2 pounds, nearly double butter consumption at 4.6 pounds, according to USDA’s Agricultural Fact Book. By 2010 per capita margarine consumption had dropped 56 percent to 3.6 pounds, while butter consumption climbed 10.5 percent to 5 pounds. The co-op’s Tipton plant makes lots of butter for export.
With consumers drinking less fluid milk, dairy processors turn to either cheese and whey as co-products or alternatively, drying milk to powder and making butter with the cream that is left over.
Increasingly, they are turning to all the above.
Making more high grade milk powder is the goal of California Dairies installation of new technology to keep powder shipped to far away places stable on the shelf for longer.
It’s all about China and their surging demand for baby formula ingredients. China just announced that it would relax its one-child policy setting the stage for a renewed population boom in coming years. October dairy products sales to China were up 65% says USDA.
Chinese powder demand began in 2011 after that nation’s melamine-tainted milk powder scandal scared Chinese mothers. The US’s highly regulated industry assures confidence in a safe product.
CDI has more big plans in the works including a search for a site to build a second milk plant in the area says Bush. This would manufacture specific products in high demand like various ingredients used in baby formula.
“Made in the U.S.A.” carries special marketing clout on packages of dairy products in China notes the dairy publication Milkweed.
A recent Fresno State study says milk production employment in the county adds up to 5,858 jobs and labor income of $86.2 million.Domestic and foreign exports come to a cool $1.6 billion for the County.