A quiet revolution has been happening in the New York dairy industry over the last quarter century. Since a low production per cow ranking of 27 in 2004, New York dairy farmers have turned the tables and delivered many annual improvements in milk per cow, increasing at a faster rate than many other states.
As of 2025, New York is now ranked fourth in production per cow, jumping 18 ranking places since 2000. In 2000 New York’s 686,000 milking cows made just under 12 billion pounds of milk. With increases in productivity, cow numbers decreased to as few as 610,000 cows in 2011 through 2013 before turning up slowly, with USDA data indicating New York had 642,000 milking cows in 2025, while increasing total milk production to over 16.5 billion pounds.
The addition of billons of dollars of processing plant capacity in New York is creating a lot of excitement in the dairy industry, leading to billions more on-farm investment, and creating significant opportunity for rural economic development.
