Rosie on the House: Arizona’s Dairy Industry on Top of the 2024 Leaderboard

By Julie Murphree

Arizona’s dairy industry in 2024 is the largest agricultural commodity at $1.2 billion in cash receipts, according to the USDA’s latest report. Beef and Dairy flip back and forth. This year, dairy gets to be on top of the leaderboard. 

To spend time learning about how we get our milk from the farm to the grocery store and what it takes to care for our Arizona dairy cows is a neat story. One generational dairy farm family tells this story wonderfully: Craig Zinke, Pinal County dairy farmer, our recent guest on the Rosie on the House show. Below, you can listen to the entire radio show where we asked farmer Zinke about his amazing and innovative operation and what he did to maximize productivity.

During our conversation, we highlighted several significant sustainability and market points about dairy farming in Arizona and across America.

• Compared to the Midwest, even the smallest dairy in Arizona is large. Our largest dairies can run about 12,000 active milk cows. But regardless of size, they are family farms and typically generational. 
• Due to innovative farming and feed production practices, a gallon of milk in 2017 required 30% less water, 21% less land, and a 19% smaller carbon footprint than it did in 2007. 
• Up to one-third of a dairy cow’s diet comes from byproducts (e.g., almond hulls and distillers’ grains) which help to reduce food waste and methane emissions in landfills. 
• U.S. Dairy is evaluating feed additives such as nitrate compounds and seaweed that have the potential to reduce enteric methane emissions from cow burps by at least 30%. 
• Cows provide good beyond nutritious milk– they help upcycle food scraps, make soil healthier and generate cleaner energy for communities.