After more than 18 months of consecutive decline, the collapse in Australian milk production appears to have finally bottomed out.

For January 2020, Australian dairy farmers produced just over 731m litres of milk, which was up 0.5% on January last year. This is the first time in almost two years that Australian milk production has shown monthly growth.

Australia’s dairy industry has been decimated by drought, weak milk prices and the recent wildfires in the country. However, the situation appears to have turned a corner, with January milk production showing modest growth.

For the first seven months of the 2019/20 milking season in Australia, which runs from July 2019 to June 2020, cumulative milk production stands at 5.6bn litres, which is down almost 4%, or almost 220m litres, on the same period last year.

New Zealand

Meanwhile, milk production in New Zealand remains subdued. For January, New Zealand milk production was down almost 1% to 2.4bn litres. This brings cumulative milk production for the first eight months of the 2019/20 milking season in New Zealand to just over 15.4bn litres, which is down 0.5%, or almost 75m litres, year on year.