The World's Largest Dairy

We set out on a 240 km, three-day ride around Mt. Taranake, one of New Zealand’s active volcanos.

It was a pleasure not to fight gale-force headwinds and get off the main highways.  

The back roads around Mt. Taranake roll through beautiful dairyland.  We were graced with sparse traffic and cool, sunny weather.

This is the heart of New Zealand’s dairy industry.  Around here, there are more cows than people.

There are more than one thousand dairy farms in the district.  

For decades, these farms fed scores of small dairy plants.  No more.  

Today, almost every one of them is closed down…driven out of business by the largest dairy in the world.

This plant boasts it processes 4 million liters of milk a day, 365 days a year.

As the market for dairy products…cheese, yogurt, and butter…has grown in Asia, New Zealand’s exports to these destinations have skyrocketed.  It’s brought prosperity to the farmers and turned the dairy industry into a global juggernaut.  The dairy business is no longer dominated by small family farms; it’s agribusiness to rival any in the world.

Farmers no longer negotiate the price at which they sell their milk.  They have literally become numbers in the big dairy’s books…

…who are even told what times of day to milk their cows.

Farmers have tried fighting the dominating size of the dairy by going large-scale themselves.

Our hosts one night on our ride were retired dairymen whose son manages a co-operative of more than a dozen family farms.  

The co-operative milks 10,000 cows a day, using the latest in high-volume production techniques.

But they’re still on the short end of negotiations with the huge dairies.  In all, we’ve spoken with three farm families.  Each said in the old days it was more of a financial struggle, but they wished they could have the freedom of those days back again.

By the way, local folklore says, if you can see Mt. Taranake, it’s going to rain.  If you can’t see the mountain, it’s already raining.  Guess what happened the day after we shot this photo?

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3