The first evidence of dairy consumption dates back over six thousand years, and today dairy products are enjoyed all over the world. Over the past couple millennia there has been an incredible amount of creativity and innovation when it comes to processing, fermenting, and consuming dairy products. In 2022, the
was estimated to be about 893 billion U.S. dollars, which is projected to grow to 1,243 billion dollars by 2028.
Milk market outlook
In terms of production, the
vast majority of dairy products are made with cow’s milk. India tops the list with the
most number of milk cows of any country, at 59.5 million cows. The
leading producer of cow milk in the world, however, is the European Union, followed by the United States, and then India. Although East Asian countries do not have a long history of milk consumption, in recent years
China has increased its domestic milk production volume by nine million in the last ten years.
International trade
One of the many consequences of globalization is that dairy products are now consumed all across the world, and every year massive quantities of milk and cheese and other dairy products are traded between countries. In 2022, just under
68 billion U.S. dollars worth of dairy products were exported, a significant increase from about 39 billion dollars in 2015. The European Union, with countries like France, Ireland, and Germany which are renowned for their cheese and butter, controls a 39 percent share of the
global dairy product export market, the largest of any world region. Germany alone
exports about six billion dollars worth of cheese in a year.
Top global dairy producers
As charming as they were, the days of small family owned dairy farms are long gone, and now enormous corporations such as Dairy Farmers of America control significant
shares of the global dairy market.
Nestlé Group, one of the largest food and drink companies in the world, earned about 11 billion Swiss francs from milk product sales in 2022, making dairy the fifth largest product category for the multinational giant.
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Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date
data than referenced in the text.
