Significant milk in Australia, contraction in New Zealand – News Milk

In December last year, milk supply in New Zealand recorded even greener figures, but this trend will not continue in January. At 2.324 million tonnes, supply is 1.19% lower than the same month level in 2023. Looking at the year 2023 as a whole, milk production has increased over the previous year. At 21.245 million tonnes, supply registered a limited increase of 0.9% last year.

It has broken the downtrend. Yet the decline is already there. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) expects that to drop to 21.2 million tonnes this year. USDA notes that the decline will be largely due to El Nino-related weather patterns, lower milk prices and continued cost inflation among dairy farmers. All this leads to a small dairy herd in New Zealand.

Dairy production in Australia is increasing
In contrast to New Zealand, milk supply in Australia has shown very strong growth figures. Dairy Australia reported milk production of 727.6 million liters in January. This is an increase of 5.2% compared to the same month of the previous year. The USDA forecasts that Australian milk supply will increase by 1% to 8.5 million tonnes in 2024. The rise is due to falling livestock prices and reduced labor shortages. Both these factors have had a major impact on the continuous decline in milk production in recent years.