Dairy Products

Dairy Products sits in the Livestock category of USDA commodity accounts, with annual US cash receipts of $44.7B and CA leading the country as the top-producing state. Physical output in the most recent reporting year reached 226 billion pounds, a figure that feeds directly into federal price-support, risk-management, and export-promotion programs. The numbers on this page are not estimates — they are drawn from the USDA Economic Research Service Farm Income and Wealth Statistics release and the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service Census of Agriculture, the same source files cited by Congress when it drafts the Farm Bill.

Production of dairy products is distributed across multiple states, each with distinct yield, weather, and logistics profiles that USDA tracks separately through the Census of Agriculture and Farm Production Regions framework. For farmers, lenders, and policy analysts the per-state share data below is the closest the federal government publishes to a live supply map of the US dairy products industry.

Reading dairy products data in isolation can mislead. Cash receipts capture farmgate revenue, not profit — they sit on top of input costs (seed, fuel, labor, land), federal program receipts, and crop-insurance indemnities that often cushion or amplify year-over-year swings. Use the state breakdown on this page alongside the national commodity rankings and federal program pages to see where dairy products production is expanding, where it is contracting, and where federal dollars are currently flowing — the three questions that drive every serious agricultural investment and policy decision.