Middle Tennessee State University is working to keep milk local.
The director of the dairy program at MTSU says the state has lost about 300 dairy farms in about the last 5 years.
About 100 years ago, MTSU had only one dairy cow. Now, they’ve got about 100 more.
It’s all part of efforts to keep the dairy farm industry alive in Tennessee.
Students do pretty much everything at the MTSU farm laboratories, from the milking to the cleaning to the feeding.
The goal is to educate the next generation of dairy farmers as more and more of them go out of business.
Director Matthew Wade runs the MTSU farm laboratories. He says the state is losing about 32 dairy farms every single year.
He adds there’s only 196 dairy farms left in the state. Wade says the price of milk has stayed about the same for the past 30 years. Meanwhile, the expenses have tripled.
But MTSU has a plan to help those farmers out.
The school played an integral part in the Tennessee Milk Program, which means milk sold with the special red logo was sourced, processed, and bottled entirely in Tennessee.
Which means by buying that milk, Tennesseans are directly helping a local farmer.
Other dairy farms have jumped on board as well, hoping to keep the next generation of farms alive.
Source: Fox17
