CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — There have been many products that have fluctuated in price over the past few months, however milk prices have remained steady despite rising costs.
3NEWS spoke with the owner of Knolle Dairy Farms, Joe Knolle, to find out the state of the dairy industry.
Knolle explained, "It's very interesting, because you're talking about a very highly perishable product that's taking a very long time to decrease in price. You have to look at that and why it's happening."
Knolle told 3NEWS, even though the cost of dairy products like milk isn't rising, the demand for it is.
"Any input across the board is going to be going up, whether it's power, whether it's propane, whether it's fuel. If you look at your farming operations, you're going to be looking at fertilizer going through the roof," Knolle said.
Knolle explained that business is booming at his dairy farm, but that comes at a cost. He said, "As these prices drop for consumers, the cost for production is going through the roof. You're talking seed, cotton seed out there $500 a ton. Things like that that are almost double the cost when you're having to feed hundreds of thousands of head of cattle on a confined space, it's gonna catch ya."
Knolle's dairy farm is over 2 thousand acres and has over 1,000 cattle. His farm is run by 3 people who work full-time and 2 who work part-time. He said it's going to take the next generation to pick up where former farmers left off.
Knolle said, "Massive consolidation in the industry, big advances in the technology, but still at the end of the day, you have to have that farmer out there on the front lines to make these choices. So how do we incentivize the next generation to do that?"
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