Things have improved, but it remains an uphill climb for dairy farmers nationwide as they attempt to sift through the aftermath of the “Great Dairy Recession” in recent years.
It was a period where milk prices collapsed with demand in a weakened economy and a healthy export market turned sour while the cost of feed skyrocketed, driven in part by the diversion of corn for ethanol production.
Milk prices have rebounded during the last couple of years — with a gallon of milk costing as much as or more than a gallon of gasoline this summer — but plenty of uncertainty into the future remains.
The road ahead is long enough that not even a new $200 million Leprino Foods cheese plant in Weld County — expected to increase the amount of dairy cattle in the area by 50,000 to 70,000 over the next five years — can completely save milk producers in the region, experts say.
“But it’s about the best thing that could have happened,” said Stephen Koontz, an agriculture economist at Colorado State University. “Given the state of the dairy industry, you can only describe Leprino’s arrival as ‘fabulous.’ “
As noted by Koontz and other dairy experts — including Wade Meek of the Dairy Farmers of America based in Henderson — so many factors outside of milk prices play a part in the sink-or-swim scenario for dairies.
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