Project Overview
Commodities
Practices
Proposal abstract:
The US dairy farming sector reported profitability only two times in 2007 and 2014 in the past two decades, despite the 40% increase in milk production. The inflated milk production cost associated reduced profitability, lead to large-scale consolidation and loss of over 2/3rd of the family-sized dairy farms during this period. South Dakota has a rapidly expanding dairy industry, with 4.5 trillion pounds milk production in 2023 (150% of that in 2019), and the cow population increasing by 20% every year. Economic hardships have forced small and medium-scale farmers to ‘get big or get out’; however, mega-dairies have increased greenhouse emissions. About 90% decline in the the number of dairy farms with <200 heads has been reported in SD from 1997 to 2017. The proposed small-scale dairy product processing (SSDPP) program in South Dakota aims to improve the profitability of dairy farming through value addition of milk by manufacturing dairy products on-farm. This approach improves the economic viability of farms, and reduces the environmental footprint by alleviating transportation costs. The SSDPP program will provide insight to South Dakota dairy farmers on consumer demand of dairy products, on-farm processing possibilities, and regulations, design, and quality considerations for establishing the processing plant.
Project objectives from proposal:
The project objectives are to:
- Evaluate the consumer demand for dairy products processed on the dairy farm in small-scale in South Dakota.
- Educate the dairy farmers on the federal and South Dakota state regulations and design considerations for establishing a dairy processing plant on the farm.
- Train the farmers on dairy product manufacturing processes for yogurt, cheese, and butter products.
- Conduct case studies to plan and design the processing plant on one or two identified dairy farms and disseminate the learnings to other SD dairy farmers.