Many of us know that the U.S. produced 200.3 billion pounds of milk throughout 2012. While that is an easy reference statistic since dairy producers are accustomed to looking at tank and rolling herd averages, it really doesn't tell us how much milk ended up in dairy products.
From a dairy plant manager or marketers perspective, pounds of milk solids drive that equation. That number takes out all the water and just looks at the remaining milk components. In the U.S., we produced 25.172 billion pounds of solids which includes butterfat, milk protein, lactose, minerals and other components.
Why does this 25.172-billion pound number even matter?
It gives us a better feel of how many total solids were used in each dairy product category. Of the milk solids total, cheese, along with whey, accounted for 37.1 percent of all milk in 2012. In second place was beverage milk at 26.1 percent. Combined, those two product uses accounted for 63.2 percent of all U.S. milk in 2012, according to the report 2012 Dairy Products Utilization & Production Trends published by the American Dairy Products Institute.
Of course one could argue that cheese and whey are two different product categories. However, it takes cheese production to create a whey stream as 100 pounds of milk yields roughly 10 pounds of cheese and 90 pounds of whey which must be dried down to capture the solids.
As for the other uses of milk:
• 18.9 percent goes towards dry milk powders and butter
• 4.2 percent gets turned into cultured products such as yogurt
• 4.1 percent ends up in ice cream and other frozen products
• 9.6 percent yields a wide array of other dairy products
If you'd like to order a copy of the 89-page publication 2012 Dairy Products Utilization & Production Trends, click the link.
