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Massachusetts
Dairy Farm Profile
Farmers
- Days cows are milked: 365 days per year
- Average operator hours worked: 90 per week
- Average work day: 13.8 hours
- Number of days worked: 6.5 per week
- Owner hourly wage rate: $3.65 per hour
- Vacation days: few to none
- Holidays: few to none
- Sick leave: none
Farms
- Family owned dairy farms: 262
- Acres farmed by dairy farmers in Massachusetts: 113,600
- Average herd size: 67 cows
- Average number of acres operation: 349 acres
- Ratio of Massachusetts local revenues to expenditures, farmland: 1:0.25 to 1:072
- Ratio of Massachusetts local revenues to expenditures, residential land:
1:1.02 to 1:1.16
Milk Production
- Total annual production: 38 million gallons
- Cost of production: $16.77 per cwt */**
- Average price paid to farmers: $13.88 per cwt **
- Cost of transporting milk within the region (200 miles), per gallon: 10¢
- Cost of transporting milk from Michigan or Wisconsin, per gallon: 43-55¢
- The price dairy farmers receive often exceeds production cost
- New England dairy farms under moderate to severe financial stress: 54 percent
- New England dairy farms in healthy financial condition: 64 percent
- Fluid milk consumed here that comes from New England or New York: nearly
100 percent
- Share of farm price decrease passed along to consumers by processors and
retailers, 1981-1997: none
- Consumers served by an average Massachusetts dairy farm: 6,000 per year
Sources: Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture Division of Dairy Services, New England Agricultural Statistics Service, Farm Credit Bank of Springfield, USDA Farm Service Agency and USDA Economic Research Service.
* per hundred pounds of milk
** average 1990-1996
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