By Joe Horner
Dairy producers are coming off a tremendously profitable 2014, and the outlook for 2015 is promising.
“Feed costs have dropped and should be lower next year,” says Joe Horner, University of Missouri Extension agricultural economist. However, Horner says milk prices are expected to drop as well. Dairy production next year will still be profitable, but not as profitable as in 2014.
Horner made his remarks during the fall MU Extension Agricultural Market Outlook Conference.
“Right now our herd size is increasing and milk production per cow is increasing, so we are expecting to grow the milk production in the U.S. in 2015 at above-average rates,” he says. That means milk, butter and cheese should cost consumers less in 2015.
Dairy prices at the farm level have dropped by as much as a third in many parts of the world. Horner says the U.S. has not seen that kind of a drop because the economy has picked up and production has been constrained. However, he says, ag economists expect the U.S. to look more like the rest of the world in 2015.
Source:missouri.edu