Louisiana is a milk deficit state. That's a term agricultural economists use to refer to states that import milk to satisfy consumer demand.
Part of the reason is that prices for commodities, including milk, have gone down, while farmers' operating costs, including what they pay for feed, have increased, said Kurt Guidry, extension economist and professor with the AgCenter.
According to the LSU AgCenter, the Louisiana was home to 165 dairies with 20,000 cows that produced 273 million pounds of milk in 2009. But the number of dairy herds has declined by nearly 35 percent in the past five years.
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