The January 6, 2014, Hoard's Dairyman Intel item "Is the US, EU or India the top milk producer?" taught us that the United States leads all countries in milk produced from dairy cows. There are two follow-ups to that discussion.
The first plot twist . . . while nearly all US milk arrives at processing plants and would be considered saleable by modern-day food security standards, that is not the case in all countries. Globally, only 53 percent of milk gets processed (pasteurized), reported the International Dairy Federation (IDF). That 53 percent benchmark would be a rough estimate because dairy product processing levels in India are hard to measure since a great deal of milk is either consumed by farmers or sold at informal markets.
The second plot twist . . . while cows' milk accounts for 83 percent or 1,404 billion pounds of total milk production globally, other mammals contribute milk destined for human consumption. Leading that list is the water buffalo, which accounted for 13 percent or of the world total, reported IDF. Buffalo milk totaled 223 billion pounds of the 1,698 billion pounds of milk produced around the globe.
Of the remaining 4 percent, goats contribute 2.4 percent to human milk consumption; sheep, 1.3 percent; and camels, 0.4 percent. (Note percentages total 100.1 due to rounding).
