Protein Continued from Page 10
However, even with protein playing a larger role in breeding decisions, experts said it will take time for those traits to show up in the milk supply. “Any changes made right now, we won’t see for three years,” Geiger said, referring to the nine-month gestation period of cows and the two years it takes calves to become cows and begin producing milk. “If con- sumer demand remains as strong, we are going to be chasing protein production for a while.” In the meantime, Fernandes said be- cause of the decline in butterfat pricing, he “pulled back” on feeding his cows costly supplements such as palmitic acids and whole cottonseed, which increase butter- fat but no longer paid off as much. “We’re not putting as much emphasis on those two ingredients,” he said. “The key is to just try to increase the overall flow of milk. That’s what gives you more total pounds of protein.” The Tulare-based farmer, who is a Land O’ Lakes owner-member, said he was op- timistic about the cooperative’s upcoming expansion into ultra-filtered milk and oth- er dairy protein products. “We’re very pleased,” he said. “We’re making something that currently has de- mand for it.” Caleb Hampton is an editor at Ag Alert. He can be reached at champton@cfbf.com.
Nearly all dairy farmers are paid not by milk volume but for milk components, or solids, primarily protein and butterfat. For much of the past decade, butterfat was in high demand, and milk pricing formulas incentivized farmers to max- imize the butterfat content in the milk their cows produced. That timeframe coincided with advances in genomic se- quencing and breeding, much of which was geared toward creating a U.S. dairy herd genetically engineered to produce milk that is rich in butterfat. “Dairymen across the country have concentrated on getting more fat in their milk,” Tulare County dairy farmer Joey Fer- nandes said. As a result, through a combination of genetics and nutrition, the amount of butterfat in the U.S. milk supply increased substantially more than protein content during the past decade. Last year, for the first time in decades, butterfat went into oversupply, and with demand for protein rising, the hierarchy in milk pricing has since reversed. During the first nine months of last year, protein prices in milk averaged $2.44 a pound while butterfat averaged $2.45 a pound, according to CoBank. In the first nine months of this year, protein averaged $2.45 a pound while butterfat prices fell to $1.69 a pound. “There’s been a big shift,” Geiger said.
Land O’ Lakes’ facility in Tulare is the Minnesota-headquartered cooperative’s largest dairy pro- cessing facility. It is set to begin manufacturing ultra-filtered milk in the first quarter of next year.
The constraint for dairy farmers is they cannot easily change their opera- tions to ramp up the protein content in their milk, limiting the extent to which they might capitalize on the protein trend in the near term. According to data from the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding, genetics accounts for 72% of the protein gains in the U.S. milk supply and 62% of the butterfat gains, with nutrition playing a comparatively larger role in boosting butterfat than protein. Fernandes, the Tulare County farmer, said he planned to “look a little more at
the protein” in genetic selection going for- ward, as he believed the market for protein will remain strong. “I think it’s here to stay,” he said. In March, Holstein Association USA, the world’s largest dairy breed association, changed its Total Performance Index—a genetic ranking system—to give more weight to protein and less to butterfat in scoring the expected production value of dairy bulls and cows. Farmers use the system to make breeding decisions that benefit herd health and profitability.
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November 4, 2026 Ag Alert 11
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