Quote Originally Posted by Greyblades View Post
Whats in a need? There was a massive, seemingly permanent demand and that has started to dry up in the coronavirus' wake, pun intended.

Only short term alternative to dumping milk is to kill the cows. You cant just turn off the milk making; you can interrupt the required pregnancy cycle for milk production but they're still going to make milk for the current offspring. If they dont get the milk removed regularly they are going to start developing infections, and what do you do with excess milk? Cant just stick it in a silo and wait for better times.
Blades, please stop it man. Just google once before shooting from the hip.

US Dairy is one of the most regulated and controlled goods by the USDA, we have several policies mandating minimum levels of prices, production, and subsidization of milk and dairy products.
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/anim...ry/policy.aspx

You can go on the official website where they track supply and demand on a monthly and annual basis:
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/dairy-data.aspx

We have American milk consumption per capita decreasing since the 1970s, but our policies have only pushed production higher and higher per year.

The farmers are not even profiting from the subsidies now that this discrepancy is so out of wack, so even they don't want to be producing this much:
https://www.realagriculture.com/2018...ys-new-report/

So again, I ask the question. Do we really need to make this much milk?

Also, you can store milk 6-12 months by pasteurizing with an ultra high temp process and then aseptically filling into a tetra-pak or similar container.
https://scidoc.org/IJFS-2326-3350-09-001e.php
You could also just turn it into cheese or butter.