Alice speaks with Clive Phillips, Adjunct Professor at Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy Institute about brand new research into the dairy industry.
Clive explains how the dairy industry has boomed in many emerging markets across Asia, but is steadily declining in Australia as farmers grapple with unreliable costs, labour shortages, long working hours and climate change impacts.
“the number of dairy farmers has declined from approximately 6,770 in 2012 to just 4,420 in 2022 – but the level of milk production hasn’t declined all that much and that’s because farms are getting bigger, more intensive, with more cows and are being run by fewer farmers”.
Read more about Clive’s research on The Conversation here.
Photo credit: Tony Hammond, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
