Marketing Operations of Dairy Cooperatives, 2017

Some 32,000 member-producers — owners of the Nation’s 118 dairy cooperatives — marketed 167 billion pounds of milk in 2017, or about 77.8 percent of all U.S. milk marketed that year. Including milk received from non-members and non-cooperative firms, total milk handled by U.S. cooperatives was 182 billion pounds, or an 84.8 percent-share of the national market. Milk plants and receiving facilities were operated by 41 cooperatives. Dairy coops marketed 86 percent of the Nation’s butter, 90 percent of nonfat and skim milk powders, 23 percent of natural cheeses, and 37 percent of dry whey products. Dairy co-ops are also major employers, with 86 co-ops reporting that they employed 35,004 full-time and 1,507 part-time employees, for a total of 36,511 employees. In 2017, those same 86 cooperatives, on a per-hundredweight (cwt) basis, had: total assets of $12.71, total liabilities of $8.55, total equity of $4.16, and a net margin before taxes of 48 cents, or a return-on-equity of 11.6 percent. This report focuses on 2017, with results compared to 2012 and 2007. It also provides some historical and trend statistics from previous studies for more extensive comparison of dairy cooperatives through time.