US Dairy Farmers Make Milk Powder to Sell Chinese

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Vauhini Vara, Farmers Retool to Feed China; Dairies in California make powdered milk last longer for growing middle class. Wall Street Journal, Apr 21, 2012.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 36053786708354.html

Quote:

"Milk powder from California Dairies [a cooperative of Central Valley dairy farmers of California] now ends up in ice cream, flavored dairy drinks and infant formula sold by China's biggest dairy company, , Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group.

"Soybeans, used largely for feeding livestock, remain the largest American agricultural export to China.

"New Zealand, the top milk exporter in the world, has benefited for years from an early investment in exports, and it sold about 379,700 tons of milk powder to China in 2011, up 10% from the previous year, according to the Global Trade Information Services. By comparison, the U.S. exported 14,900 tons last year, down 4% from 2010, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"milk powder [is] a product that had been low on American dairies' priority lists for years because it wasn't coveted in the US.

"China consumed an average of 1,338 kilotons of milk powder annually from 2008 to 2010, compared with 528 kilotons consumed each year in the US, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Note: Visalia, California
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visalia,_California
(Visalia is named for [one of the first settlers] Nathaniel Vise's ancestral home, Visalia, Kentucky)