World Dairy Expo: Milk components demonstrate impressive growth in the US

12 January 2026

8 minute read

By: Lee Williamson

North America

Corey Geiger, lead dairy economist at CoBank, was recently interviewed by The Dairy Site's Sarah Mikesell at the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

There’s been some big changes in US milk components within the last year. What's driving these changes? 

The US is a global leader in growing milk components. The two biggest milk components are butterfat and protein. The US is leading the world in that growth, not only on a percentage basis, but in pounds year over year. There are some countries that do make more butterfat and more protein, but the sheer growth that's been driven is really two-fold. 

The dairy cow is the most studied domestic animal on planet Earth. In the US at least, we have over 123 million records, and it's phenotypic records, which are the driver of genomic technology. Genomics is a study of DNA. Through that we are really accelerating growth in butterfat and protein. This is enhanced by dairy farms and improved feeding practices. 

Your latest report suggests the increase in butterfat levels is increasing some challenges for US cheesemakers. What's going on there? 

Earlier this year in February, I spoke at the USDA Ag Outlook Forum. Up until 2010, if you said milk production was up 3%, then butterfat was up 3%. That all changed after 2010. We were at only a 3.69% butterfat in our US milk supply back then. Last year, it was 4.24% which is tremendous growth. The average month in the US, we grew 2% to 3% butterfat pounds. The last five months this year, we're at 5% or 6% growth. That should be celebrated based on what we're doing on the farm. Even though the last 52 weeks butter products, the sales are up 4.5%. When it comes to cheese making, half of the milk in the United States goes into cheese. Of course, we make whey after that too. 

If you're a mozzarella or Italian style cheese maker, you've always been pulling out butterfat and sending it to butter churns or ice cream. But if you were making American style cheeses, you really needed butterfat and protein to be in this ratio of what we call protein to fat ratio of 0.8%. That was fine until this butterfat boom came. I looked at these ratios and this is what cheese makers are talking about. We fall under that 0.8 number; so that's a concern. 

What happens if you're making an American style cheese and you're under 0.8? You are compromising the cheese quality. You're making soft cheese because you need a high enough protein level in the cheese to make really high quality cheese. 

To solve this, producers have to standardize their cheese in a cheese plant. They have to use a separator and pull out some cream. Every passing year, they’ve got to pull out more cream, butterfat, or either pull that off or add milk protein concentrate, the middle word being protein. To add protein from another manufacturing process to elevate the protein levels to add more labor, cost, equipment and all the above. 

So, if cheese makers had their utopia, they'd probably measure casing because casing is the protein that makes cheese. These are a lot of moving dynamics and they're shifting so quickly right now. 

How does US milk composition compare to other countries? What are the implications to the US export market? Share with us the international component. 

This is an international process. Who are the big three exporters? In this order:

1. European Union - the EU 27 export about 20% of their milk supply in some form of  the dairy product.
2. New Zealand - a little country, which is about the size of Wisconsin and Illinois, but they have 5 million people and 5 million dairy cows. So, it’s a mighty force exporting 95% of their milk production, which is one third of their gross domestic product.
3. United States - in 1995, we were neophytes. We were just babies on this journey. Now we're quickly approaching 18% to 20% of our milk is butterfat and protein is being exported. 

If you look at New Zealand, they're running at about 5% butterfat and 399 protein. This is from data from New Zealand internally over the past decade, and that's grown in recent months. Now half of their dairy herd is what Kiwis would call a KiwiCross, which is a Holstein Jersey. Then the next largest is Holstein and then some other dairy breeds. They start at a higher protein plane and butterfat, but if you do that ratio, it comes out to that 0.8 number that ties back that cheese making. 

In the EU, 10 years ago they had higher butter fat levels than the US, but three years ago, we passed them. It’s because you need a big population base to make genomics work. There's certainly a lot of Holsteins in the European continent, but here in the US, at least four out of five cows are Holstein. If you go to Germany, Holland and Italy, you would have a lot of Holsteins. When you get to a country like France, maybe a third of the population roughly is Mount Billiard or Normandy, so not as big of a population there. Their protein production has been pretty flat, but the US has caught up to them in that regard.

I threw Canada into this study because my working theory was as a past president of Holstein USA and having made many trips to Holstein and going to Holstein Canada annual meetings. We have a shared population base in North America. If you put the trend lines out for the US and if you put the trend lines out for Canada, they almost mirror each other. People want the components, the butterfat and the protein, not the water carrier. That's where this whole story evolves quickly. 

What does it mean for exports? 

Through the first eight months of this year, the US has exported 250% more butterfat and anhydrous milkfat than they did last year. Those are the two big butterfat components or products.

Cheese exports are at a record pace again this year as well. We have some tariff tribulations here, but dairy is still doing quite well, not only because of the product mix. If you look at international prices, we're under the price for the EU and New Zealand, which we talked about being the top two exporters. 

Do we have the financial advantage? 

That’s part of it through the beginning of the year. If you look at the relationship of the US dollar to the EU. It's running 12% to 14% down compared to a year ago, which is another factor in this. 

How can US dairy producers optimize milk composition to best serve the needs of processors going forward? 

This is the money question. If we look at milk components and pricing, 90% of the US dairy farmers get paid on multiple component pricing. Again, 90%, those big two components are butterfat and protein. That makes up 90% of the milk check. From 2000 to 2014, protein won every NASCAR or Formula 1 race as the undisputed champion. Then 2015 came and butterfat won eight out of 10. 

We are returning to an era where protein is going to win the NASCAR or Formula 1 race. It will lead milk checks. There will be incentives to maybe reduce feeding practices to make more butterfat. There's been a lot of ration formulation changes. 

If I'm talking to a dairy farmer, I tell them to have a conversation with their nutritionist. We probably could pull the throttle back on making a little butterfat. Protein's not quite as easy to change in formula rations. There may be fewer tools in the toolbox, but we can drop that butterfat ratio.

Now, when we look at genetics, butterfat and protein, for the geneticists listening here, they already know that their correlated traits are at 80% level. That's an incredibly high correlation. Even if I put full emphasis on protein on those two components, I'm going to move butterfat along at an 80% clip. 

We already have our genetic selection baked in for three years, then nine months to conceive, and two months to get that heifer in a milking string. If I was a producer, I would be looking long term. Maybe I should be pivoting a little bit more to higher protein versus butterfat. Trend has a lot of power. In the US, there's a lot of data that shows that 8% to 12% of Americans are on GLP-1 weight loss drugs. So, just think about Ozempic. 

Cornell did a study earlier this year, and they looked at 40 food groups, 36 of them lost market share. The fourth place honorable mention is a growing category including snack bars because their emphasis is high-end protein. One of the main protein ingredients is whey protein. Third place honorable mention is meat snacks - a high protein product. The grand champion is yogurt, another high protein food source. That study narrows down to cottage cheese, which is up 14% year-over-year. Yogurt set a double digit growth clip right now. 

Dairy proteins are the most complete protein known to humanity. There's over 500 molecules in milk, and we're learning more and more about them. Amino acids are the building block for muscle, they're a building block for protein. So dairy is going to have a lot of wins in that category. 

Is genetics the leading driver for changing these components, or can you do it with nutrition? 

I'll tell all the nutritionists out there; nutrition has played a big role. However, if I were to put the billboard marquee out, it would have been genetics. When I spoke at the USDA Ag Outlook Forum, Jonathan Lamb was kind enough to come with me and speak. Jonathan is a New York and Ohio dairy farmer, and he showed a data set. In this example, these Holstein cows are under the same farm management. His fourth and later lactation cows were at a 3.6 butterfat and a 3.2 protein. But when he looked at his first and second lactation cows, his first and second lactation Holsteins were averaging a 5.0 butterfat and a 3.6 protein. That's how quickly this changed in four years on a farm, on a top-end farm. 

So, both are important, but genetics can play a really big role? 

Genetics can play a big role. It’s not like buying a bag of corn seed, soybean seed or alfalfa. That's a one-time purchase. If you're keeping your dairy replacements and building upon them, this is an additive effect upon which you can grow. If your number one saleable product is milk, the cow is your number one investment and if you can make each generation better, that's the goal.