Americans each drink 1.8 fewer gallons of fluid milk per year than they did a decade ago. That might not sound like much—until you multiply it by 310 million Americans. Then it becomes a very big number.

Specifically, 558 million gallons of lost milk sales per year. Or 6.5 billion pounds of milk production (3.4% of 2010’s U.S. milk production of 193 billion pounds). That represents the combined production of Iowa and Florida—and the blood, sweat and effort of the 2,300 dairy producers in those states.

You get the picture. And it isn’t pretty.

The good news is that MilkPEP (the Milk Processor Education Program) now thinks it knows what has gone wrong with milk sales and what it needs to do to reverse the trend.

MilkPEP is responsible for fluid milk advertising, funded by milk buyers through a 20¢ per cwt. assessment tacked onto Class I prices. The assessment generates some $100 million annually (though about $10 million of that is returned to the California Milk Processor Board).

See Comments