Dairy Industry: Early Industrialization: 1850–1900

The first spark in the industrial dairying movement came in 1851, when a cheese maker in Oneida County, New York, began contracting for his neighbors’ milk in order to create a larger and more efficient cheese plant. The system took a few years to gain popularity. Farmers were apprehensive about combining their milk with that of neighboring farms. By the 1860s, however, the practice swept through New York, was adopted by the butter industry, and began to penetrate other areas of the country.

This growth was fostered by increased cheese and butter exports to Britain (which was undergoing a series of crop failures) and rising prices. Exports rose tenfold between 1860 and 1875. Prices doubled between 1860 and 1865. Pushed by these higher prices, the number of cheese factories in New York State grew from 38 to 402 between 1860 and 1864. The trend soon spread westward, particularly to Wisconsin, where the first factory opened in 1864. Land in Wisconsin was cheaper than in New York, as were feeding costs, since New York farmers fed their cattle western grain. Cheese factories multiplied in Wisconsin as troubles hit the wheat market following the Civil War. By 1880 Wisconsin had more than twelve hundred cheese factories, although it was still second in production to New York.