Australia’s largest milk producing state, Victoria, was down 5.6% year-on-year in January. Its season-to-date decline is now 1.7%. Australia as whole has had persisting dry conditions throughout summer and input costs have been high, so this kind of reduction in output in the major dairying region is not unexpected.
Queensland (-2.3%), South Australia (-3.8%) and Tasmania (-3.4%) were all down on January 2015. Milk production in New South Wales (+2.1%) and Western Australia (+7.3%) was up, but not by enough to mitigate the losses.
