Regional Differences in the Dairy Industry and Their Use in Evaluating Dairy Surpluses

Abstract

Dairy marketing analysts and policymakers can use several factors or characteristics to differentiate milk producing regions: milk production, farm milk prices, costs of producing milk, levels of local commercial sales, sales to the CCC, and so on. Becker and others have illustrated how many of these variables differ across regions. This paper provides further information, focusing especially on differences across states. The major objective is to review some of the indicators that are frequently used to describe states or regions and to discuss how they relate to perceptions about surplus dairy production. Part of our purpose is also to point out that there often are considerable differences among states in a region. A corollary is that the states one chooses to include in a region can affect how a region looks in total. Another basic point is that how one characterizes a state or region depends quite a bit on the indicators used to describe it.