Despite weak farmgate milk prices and poor farmer sentiment on the ground, US milk production has continued its steady growth into 2019.

For January, US milk production stood at 8.15bn litres, which was up almost 1% on the same month last year.

And for February, the latest figures from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) show that milk production stood at just over 7.7bn litres, which is up slightly (+0.2%) on February 2018 levels.

Continued expansion

The continued expansion in US milk production is been driven by dairy farmers in states such as Texas, New York, Wisconsin, Idaho and Colorado.

In Texas, milk production for February soared almost 8% year on year to 460m litres, while, in New York, February milk supplies rose almost 3% to 508m litres.

In the Midwest states, Wisconsin dairy farmers pumped out just over 1bn litres in February (+1.5% year on year), while Idaho milk collections were up 2% to 509m litres.

Dutch milk

Closer to home in Europe, Dutch milk production for February stood at 1.05bn litres, which was down 2% on the same month last year.

Dutch milk production for the opening two months of 2019 (Jan-Feb) is now back almost 4% year on year at 2.3bn litres.