Issue 6: The future of milk and dairy farming

All leaders of advocacy organizations know that milk production in the U.S. has been declining. There are other topics about milk and dairy farming studied by academics that may fly under the radar of advocates and feature less often in their discussions. This issue of Academic Studies Without Tears introduces several of these topics which may seem minor but can raise a few intriguing questions and provide some food for thought (e.g. 75% of Nigeria’s dairy market is controlled by a single company).

The centerpiece of this issue, though, is a trio of papers published in 2020 by a team of academics from the University of Oxford, and funded by the Wellcome Trust (one of the world’s largest health funders). These papers present evidence and arguments that plant-based alternatives to dairy milk and agroecology may not be able to transform global industrial dairy farming as some advocates hope.