Co-operative Production

March 14, 2012

A large part of the dairy industry in the United States is the functioning cooperatives that individual dairy farmers work with.  Dairy herds are larger than they ever were before and it makes more sense to ship milk to a cooperative that can turn the milk into a good that can be sold to the public.  Some farmers have found that producing an "on-farm good," like cheese, helps them remain more financially stable.  Most, however, ship their milk to a particular processing plant that utilizes the liquid in various products and then sells them on a larger marketplace.  

I found, when I was researching dairy production in the 20th century, that Ireland has a similar system that was developed for similar reasons.  The need to develop a product for market and have the product shipped to a wider audience made it necessary for producers to group together.  Butter was a major export in Ireland, and the technologies used to produce butter the best were expensive.  Creameries found that it was more efficient for them to share a common separator to produce their butter.

Even into the 1950's, the Irish dairy industry was very underdeveloped.  At this point, most of the milk production was used to produce butter directly on the farms.   The farms were only able to provide a minimal supply of milk during only two months of the year and were getting less than two old pence per pint.  In the Fennor Co-operative Dairy Society in 1951, for example, there were 320 farms averaging seven cows per farm .  Only five of these farms had milking machines. 

Between 1954 and 1965, the overall number of farms decreased, but the farm productivity increased and 80 farms had milk machines.  By this point, an appointment of experts set out to examine the future of the dairy industry in Ireland in preparation of Ireland's entry into the European Community.  They found that there were too many small and inefficient creameries and recommended forming larger units.

The above images show what it was like milking a cow by hand.  Knowing what it is like to milk a cow with a milking machine, it would be pretty difficult to go back to milking like this.

Citations:

Breathnach, Proinnsias.  The evolution of the spatial structure of the Irish dairy processing industry.  Retrieved March 14, 2012, from http://www.ucd.ie/gsi/pdf/33-2/dairy.pdf

 http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/looking-at-places/leitrim/farming-in-leitrim/womens-work/