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| | | | |  | | By Jordan Wolman | | | | | 
| Americans love dairy products. We consumed an average of 655 pounds of milk, butter, ice cream, cheese and yogurt in 2020. For more than 30 years, our dairy consumption has been going up. But climate change might throw a wrench into our eating habits. As temperatures rise, cows in particular could feel the heat, which would lead to less milk production and higher prices. An Agriculture Department study projects that heat stress could cost farmers between $1.69 billion and $2.36 billion a year, with dairy producers bearing most of the burden. USDA evaluated four scenarios for rising temperatures. All projected a decline in the quantity and value of milk produced. When cows are under heat stress, they expend less energy on milk production. The act of producing milk itself causes heat in cows, said John Bernard , an animal and dairy science professor at the University of Georgia. Heat stress also can delay maturity in calves and stunt growth of crops used for animal feed. The result could be higher costs for everyone. Dairy farmers will spend between $42 million and $108 million every year in higher production costs tied to rising temperatures. By 2030, families will be paying an extra $64 million to $162 million a year for milk as prices rise.
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Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture |
“When you spread that production out across the country and you think about supplying local markets, it does begin to impact that market and the availability to meet the needs of the consumers,” Bernard said.
A drop in production would mean a drop in farmer income, he said. Smaller farms in particular will be poorly positioned to bear the losses. It also could mean a bigger carbon footprint for dairy farms, because it would take more cows to produce the same amount of milk. It’s not all bad news
Temperatures already are rising, but milk production has continued to climb. Both production per cow and total annual milk production has risen every year since 2009, according to USDA data.
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| The USDA study assumed that farmers wouldn’t make changes to adapt to rising temperatures. Other experts predict that they will, and that milk production will continue to increase between now and 2030. But those adaptations, like installing barn fans, cooling cells and soaking mechanisms, cost money. That’s an argument that U.S. farmers and their banks need to invest in climate adaptation. “What is the size of the loss if we don’t make this investment?” said Robert Collier, head of the animal and food sciences department at the University of Idaho. “The financial community needs this kind of information so they can judge the value of investments into the capital of a dairy operation.” Some farmers are adapting by finding profitable ways to cut greenhouse gases. In an upcoming story, POLITICO's Marie J. French explores how New York dairy farmers are installing anaerobic digesters to capture methane gas emitted by cow manure and burn it for electricity — and selling the emissions reductions to California. Look for it later this week on politico.com.
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