In 2010, 55 billion pounds of milk were sold in the United States. By 2018, that figure dropped to 47.7 billion, a decline of about 13%.
But the plant-based sector is still small, and can't explain such a big drop in milk sales. Other factors are making an impact. As milk sales fell, companies like Dean struggled to find retail customers. Dairy farmers got squeezed by changes in the international milk market and domestic oversupply. "I've never seen anything like that," Brian Gould, emeritus professor of agriculture and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison told CNN Business. He said Suiza's growth"wasn't organic," adding,"it was really just from the outside in."
The combination, coupled with declining milk sales, put Dean in a tough spot. Then in 2018 Walmart, one of its major clients, opened its own milk processing plant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, delivering a fatal blow.