Wisconsin’s dairy cows keep pumping out more milk while others states are cutting back. The National Ag Statistics Service said the Badger State produced just over 2.1 billion pounds of milk in February, an increase of 0.3 percent from the same month in 2012.
Nationally, almost 15.8 billion pounds of milk were produced last month, down 3.5 percent from the year before.
This might be the last we hear about the subject for a while. The USDA says it will stop issuing several reports, including the monthly milk numbers, because of the federal sequester spending cuts. Officials say the reports will not return until after the next fiscal year begins in October.
California, the nation’s top producer, had a drop of eight percent in its milk output last month to just over 3.5 billion pounds. New York and Idaho were the only other states to produce more than a billion pounds, and both also registered declines.
Wisconsin had almost 1.3 million dairy cows last month, about 40,000 more than a year ago.