Our World
in Data
Data

Milk production

FAO
See all data and research on:
Agricultural Production

What you should know about this indicator

Item: Milk Description: Milk, eggs, honey and beeswax are included as products of live animals. Fibres of animal origin (mainly wool and silk) are included with fibres of vegetal and animal origin. Milk and dairy products. Estimates of milk production as reported by countries refer to one or more of the following three concepts. Gross production is milk production plus milk sucked by young animals. Production available for consumption is net production less milk fed to animals, milk retained by farmers for food and feed, direct sales to consumers and farm waste. The FAO concept relates to net milk production. Data should be reported by kind of milking animal (cow, sheep, goat, etc.) in terms of whole milk and by weight. In most developed countries only 5-10 percent of whole milk is used directly for human consumption. The bulk of milk production is processed before being marketed as liquid milk (e. G. standardized, pasteurized, skimmed, etc.) or is manufactured in to products such as cream, butter, cheese, evaporated and condensed milk, milk powder, casein, yogurt, ice cream, etc. About 70 percent of whole milk is processed into dairy products; the by-products of these processes (e. G. skim milk, buttermilk and whey) are used either for feed or are manufactured into other dairy products, e. G. dry skim milk and low-fat cheese. Processed milk and dairy products are often supplemented with vitamins, mineral and various additives. FAO list 50 milk and dairy product items in the list that follows, of which five are primary products. Some food products containing milk are not listed separately by FAO, e. G. eggnog, sherbet, malted milk, chocolate milk drink and mellorine.

Metric: Production Description: Amount produced in the year

Source
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 14, 2024
Next expected update
March 2025
Date range
1961–2022
Unit
tonnes

Related research and writing

A dark blue background with a lighter blue world map superimposed over it. Yellow text that says Meat and Dairy Production by Our World in Data

Meat and Dairy Production

Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Crop and livestock statistics are recorded for 278 products, covering the following categories:

  1. Crops primary: Cereals, Citrus Fruit, Fibre Crops, Fruit, Oil Crops, Oil Crops and Cakes in Oil Equivalent, Pulses, Roots and Tubers, Sugar Crops, Treenuts and Vegetables. Data are expressed in terms of area harvested, production quantity and yield. Area and production data on cereals relate to crops harvested for dry grain only. Cereal crops harvested for hay or harvested green for food, feed or silage or used for grazing are therefore excluded.

  2. Crops processed: Beer of barley; Cotton lint; Cottonseed; Margarine, short; Molasses; Oil, coconut (copra); Oil, cottonseed; Oil, groundnut; Oil, linseed; Oil, maize; Oil, olive, virgin; Oil, palm; Oil, palm kernel; Oil, rapeseed; Oil, safflower; Oil, sesame; Oil, soybean; Oil, sunflower; Palm kernels; Sugar Raw Centrifugal; Wine.

  3. Live animals: Animals live n.e.s.; Asses; Beehives; Buffaloes; Camelids, other; Camels; Cattle; Chickens; Ducks; Geese and guinea fowls; Goats; Horses; Mules; Pigeons, other birds; Pigs; Rabbits and hares; Rodents, other; Sheep; Turkeys.

  4. Livestock primary: Beeswax; Eggs (various types); Hides buffalo, fresh; Hides, cattle, fresh; Honey, natural; Meat (ass, bird nes, buffalo, camel, cattle, chicken, duck, game, goat, goose and guinea fowl, horse, mule, Meat nes, meat other camelids, Meat other rodents, pig, rabbit, sheep, turkey); Milk (buffalo, camel, cow, goat, sheep); Offals, nes; Silk-worm cocoons, reelable; Skins (goat, sheep); Snails, not sea; Wool, greasy.

  5. Livestock processed: Butter (of milk from sheep, goat, buffalo, cow); Cheese (of milk from goat, buffalo, sheep, cow milk); Cheese of skimmed cow milk; Cream fresh; Ghee (cow and buffalo milk); Lard; Milk (dry buttermilk, skimmed condensed, skimmed cow, skimmed dried, skimmed evaporated, whole condensed, whole dried, whole evaporated); Silk raw; Tallow; Whey (condensed and dry); Yoghurt.

Retrieved on
March 14, 2024
Retrieved from
http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - Production: Crops and livestock products (2023).

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Milk production”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “Agricultural Production”. Data adapted from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/milk-production-tonnes [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2023) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Milk production – FAO” [dataset]. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Production: Crops and livestock products” [original data]. Retrieved October 31, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/milk-production-tonnes