(The Center Square) — The Louisiana dairy industry has been losing ground for decades, with small dairy farms dwindling in numbers and facing an uphill battle for survival.
As of 2022, just 74 dairy farms remained in the state, a dramatic drop from 445 in 2002, according to data from the National Agricultural Statistics Service.
For Louisiana’s family-owned farms, which make up 100% of dairy operations in the Florida Parishes, sustaining operations has become nearly impossible amid rising costs and industry-wide pressures.
One of the main factors squeezing Louisiana’s dairy farmers is the relentless gap between production costs and revenue. On average, the cost of producing 100 pounds of milk exceeds its sales price by $7.23, as found by researchers from the University of Tennessee. While large factory farms may absorb these losses, family farms often cannot.
The rise of factory farming has only accelerated this decline, leaving a lasting impact on small dairy operators across the country.
Nationally, family-scale dairies have been disappearing rapidly, with 64% of these farms shutting down between 1997 and 2017, according to a report from Food & Water Watch.
Despite increased milk production due to genetic improvements and factory farm expansion, low milk prices and rising costs have kept family farms on shaky ground. In fact, U.S. dairy farms overall have only turned a profit twice in the last two decades.
Louisiana’s family dairies have also contended with their own regional challenges, from hurricanes to underdeveloped infrastructure, which have hit these farms hard.
After Hurricane Katrina, many dairy farmers left the sector entirely, pivoting to other agricultural areas better suited to Louisiana’s conditions. In the 1970s, Louisiana produced more than a billion pounds of milk annually, but in 2023, production hit an all-time low of 101 million pounds, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Shifts in federal agricultural policy have also paved the way for factory farms to outpace smaller operations.
The 1996 Farm Bill marked a turning point, dismantling several grain supply management policies that had helped stabilize prices. As a result, grain prices plummeted, making it cheaper for factory farms to buy feed instead of growing it. This shift favored larger-scale operations that didn’t rely on grazing or in-house feed production, giving factory farms an edge.
The industry’s changing landscape has introduced other consequences. Factory farms produce higher milk yields with fewer cows, but they also generate large amounts of methane through intensive manure management, a process that has doubled emissions from 1990 to 2020.
