Whole milk rises to 39 percent of US fluid milk sales as the total falls 22 percent

On 2 April 2026 the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a Chart of Note showing that Americans were buying much less fluid milk than they had in 2009, but that a growing share of the milk they did buy was whole milk. The chart, titled "Whole milk share rises amid long-term decline in total fluid milk sales", was prepared by ERS economist Adriana Valcu-Lisman and drew on the agency's Dairy Data series, which reports the quantities of fluid beverage milk sold in the United States, product by product.

According to ERS, total fluid milk sales fell from a peak of about 55,433 million pounds in 2009 to 43,179 million pounds in 2024, a decrease of 22 percent, even though sales rose modestly from 2023 to 2024. Over the same period whole milk, which had slipped to a low of 26 percent of sales in 2012, recovered to 39 percent of sales in 2024. The figures describe the U.S. market up to 2024, the latest full year in the chart.

ERS gave three reasons for the long fall in fluid milk sales: a falling proportion of young children in the U.S. population, the increasing availability of alternatives to milk, and changing consumer preferences. Children drink much of their milk at school and with breakfast cereal, as ERS's own research on milk drinking by age, described below, shows.

The agency also looked beyond 2024. It said recent data from USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), the USDA agency that runs the federal milk marketing orders, indicated that the long-term decline in total fluid milk sales likely continued in 2025, while whole milk maintained its share of the market. The chart did not give a total for 2025.

Sales in these statistics are measured in pounds, as are USDA's figures for milk produced on farms. "Fluid beverage milk" covers the milk that is packaged for drinking: whole, reduced-fat, low-fat and skim milk, flavoured milk such as chocolate milk, and smaller products such as buttermilk and eggnog. Milk that goes into cheese, butter, yogurt, ice cream or milk powder is counted elsewhere in the ERS tables.

The chart breaks the total into product categories, and the movements inside it ran in different directions. Whole milk had been the leading category in the early 2000s. Its share then fell, reaching its low of 26 percent in 2012, before climbing back to 39 percent in 2024. ERS read the change as a sign that "consumer concerns over dairy fat, which manifested during the early to mid-2000s, have diminished."

Reduced-fat milk, commonly sold as 2 percent milk, moved the other way. It was the dominant category from 2005 to 2017, with about 34 percent of sales, but its share declined after 2017 and stood at about 30 percent in 2024.

The combined category of low-fat and skim milk, the leanest milks on the shelf, also lost ground. ERS said it had declined since 2015 and accounted for 16 percent of sales in 2024, down more than 13 percent from its recent highs in 2010 and 2011.

The remaining categories are smaller. Flavoured milk and the group ERS calls other fluid milk products, which includes eggnog and buttermilk, together averaged about 13 percent of sales over the five years before the chart was published.

• Total fluid milk sales: about 55,433 million pounds at the 2009 peak; 43,179 million pounds in 2024 (down 22 percent).
• Whole milk: leading category in the early 2000s; low of 26 percent of sales in 2012; 39 percent in 2024.
• Reduced-fat milk: about 34 percent of sales from 2005 to 2017; about 30 percent in 2024.
• Low-fat and skim milk: declining since 2015; 16 percent in 2024.
• Flavoured milk and other products such as eggnog and buttermilk: about 13 percent on average over the latest five years.

In the United States the word "milk" on a carton is governed by a federal standard of identity set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 131.110. Under that standard, milk in its final package form for beverage use must have been pasteurized or ultrapasteurized and must contain not less than 3¼ percent milkfat and not less than 8¼ percent milk solids not fat. The rule allows processors to adjust milk by separating part of the milkfat or by adding cream, concentrated milk, dry whole milk, skim milk or nonfat dry milk, and milk may be homogenized.

The same standard allows vitamins to be added. If vitamin A is added, each quart must contain not less than 2,000 International Units; if vitamin D is added, each quart must contain 400 International Units. The label must then say so, for example "vitamin D added".

The 3.25 percent minimum is the fat level of what shoppers know as whole milk. A report by DTN/Progressive Farmer in January 2026 put whole milk at 3.25 percent milkfat and 150 calories per cup, and 2 percent milk at 2 percent milkfat and 120 calories per cup.

The fall in sales after 2009 is the latest stretch of a much longer trend that ERS has tracked for decades. In its table of per capita dairy consumption, last updated in December 2025, ERS estimated that Americans had 247 pounds of fluid beverage milk per person in 1975, 196 pounds in 2000 and 181 pounds in 2009. The figure was about 169 pounds in 2012, about 140 pounds in 2020 and about 127 pounds in both 2023 and 2024.

An earlier ERS Chart of Note by Jeanine Bentley, published on 15 August 2014, measured the same decline in gallons. It found that fluid milk availability had peaked at 42.3 gallons per person in 1945 and reached a record low of 19.6 gallons per person in 2012. Whole milk alone fell from 25.3 gallons per person in 1970 to 5.4 gallons in 2012, while lower-fat milks had levelled off at an average of about 14 gallons per person since 1998. That 2012 low for whole milk is the same year in which, by the new chart, whole milk's share of sales hit its bottom.

In a June 2022 article in the ERS magazine Amber Waves, economists Hayden Stewart and Fred Kuchler wrote that per capita fluid milk consumption had been falling for more than 70 years, with declines in each of the previous seven decades. Measured as daily intake, it fell from 0.78 cup per person in 1990 to 0.69 cup in 2000, 0.62 cup in 2010 and 0.49 cup in 2019. The decline in the 2010s was faster than in any earlier decade of that period.

Stewart and Kuchler found the decline in every age group. Among children aged 12 and under, milk drunk as a beverage averaged 1.07 cup-equivalents a day in 2003-04 and 1.10 in 2009-10, then fell to 0.79 in 2017-18. Milk poured on cereal by children fell from 0.39 cup-equivalent in 2003-04 to 0.25 in 2017-18, the steepest drop in their figures. Milk added to coffee and tea showed no statistically significant change.

Their work also pointed to generations. Citing a 2013 ERS study, they wrote that Americans born in the 1970s drank less milk as teenagers and in their twenties and thirties than people born in the 1960s did at the same ages, and that those born in the 1980s and 1990s were likely to drink even less as adults. Habits formed in childhood were part of the explanation.

Competition from other drinks played a smaller role than often assumed. Retail scanner data for 2013 to 2018 showed little evidence that any single beverage, whether soft drinks, juice, bottled water or ready-to-drink coffee and tea, had replaced milk. Plant-based drinks such as almond and soy milk did compete with cow's milk, but the growth in their sales was much smaller than the fall in milk sales, so they explained only a small part of the trend. ERS research in 2017 had also found that thousands of new food and drink products entered the U.S. market every year.

Americans did not turn away from dairy as a whole. In the same Amber Waves article ERS noted that per capita consumption of cheese and yogurt had more than tripled since 1970. The December 2025 ERS table shows American-type cheese at 8.1 pounds per person in 1975 and 16.0 pounds in 2024, other cheeses at 6.1 pounds in 1975 and 23.5 pounds in 2024, yogurt at 2.0 pounds in 1975 and 14.5 pounds in 2024, and butter at 4.7 pounds in 1975 and 6.8 pounds in 2024. Total dairy intake, which peaked in 1987 at 1.57 cup-equivalents a day, was 1.49 cup-equivalents in 2019, and about 90 percent of the U.S. population did not meet the dairy recommendation in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025.

Milk is promoted by two national programmes funded by the industry itself: the Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Program, paid for by milk processors, and the National Dairy Promotion and Research Board, paid for by dairy farmers and importers. The title of the 2022 Amber Waves article described the fall in fluid milk consumption as a downward trend "proving difficult to reverse".

For many years federal advice steered Americans toward lower-fat milk. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2020-2025, issued jointly by USDA and the Department of Health and Human Services, listed among the core elements of a healthy diet "Dairy, including fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese, and/or lactose-free versions and fortified soy beverages and yogurt as alternatives." They recommended 2 to 3 cup-equivalents of dairy a day, depending on age, sex and activity.

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2025-2030, released in January 2026, changed that advice. They say: "When consuming dairy, include full-fat dairy with no added sugars," and describe dairy as an excellent source of protein, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals. Their serving goal for dairy is 3 servings a day as part of a 2,000-calorie dietary pattern, adjusted to individual calorie needs, and they list full-fat dairy among whole foods that supply healthy fats.

The 2025-2030 guidelines kept a limit on saturated fat. They state that "in general, saturated fat consumption should not exceed 10% of total daily calories", add that significantly limiting highly processed foods will help meet this goal, and say that more high-quality research is needed to determine which types of dietary fats best support long-term health.

For children the new guidelines say that full-fat dairy products are important to help meet energy needs and support brain development, and that no amount of added sugars is recommended. For infants, they advise that a baby fed infant formula should stop formula at 12 months of age and be given whole milk.

The ERS chart covers sales only up to 2024, before the 2025-2030 guidelines appeared, so the rise in whole milk's share it records came while federal advice still favoured fat-free and low-fat milk. People with heart disease, high cholesterol or other conditions, and parents planning a child's diet, should take the advice of a doctor or a registered dietitian on which milk suits them.

Schools are one of the biggest places where American children drink milk. In their 2022 study Stewart and Kuchler found that children aged 6 to 12 got 35 percent of their fluid milk at school and teenagers aged 13 to 18 got 25 percent, and that milk consumption was higher on weekdays, when schools are in session. Under the National School Lunch Program, schools must offer a cup of milk with every lunch. DTN reported in January 2026 that the programme served nearly 30 million children daily.

For more than a decade school milk was limited to the leaner kinds. DTN reported that, under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, a federal rule banned whole milk from school meals on the view that children's calories from fat should be restricted. On 25 April 2024 USDA's Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) published a further final rule on school meal patterns. An FNS memo of 7 October 2024 (SP 01-2025) explained that it kept the existing milk requirements: schools could offer fat-free and low-fat milk, flavoured and unflavoured, to students from kindergarten to grade 12, and unflavoured milk had to be offered at every school breakfast and lunch.

The 2024 rule also set limits on added sugars in flavoured milk. From 1 July 2025, flavoured milk in the school lunch and breakfast programmes could contain no more than 10 grams of added sugars per 8 fluid ounces. Flavoured milk sold separately to middle and high school students was limited to 15 grams of added sugars per 12 fluid ounces. Lactose-free and reduced-lactose milk, cultured milks such as buttermilk and kefir, and ultra-high-temperature milk also counted as milk for school meals.

That changed shortly before the ERS chart appeared. The Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, introduced in the Senate as S. 222 on 23 January 2025, passed the Senate by unanimous consent in November 2025 and the House of Representatives by voice vote on 15 December 2025. It was signed into law on 14 January 2026 as Public Law 119-69. The law allows schools in the National School Lunch Program to serve whole and 2 percent milk alongside low-fat and fat-free milk. According to DTN, it also eased access to plant-based alternatives to cow's milk in schools, and it carried the Protecting Children with Food Allergies Act, which requires school food service staff to be trained on food allergies.

DTN reported that the dairy industry expected the return of whole milk to school meals to support fluid milk sales, and that USDA said the law aligned with the 2025-2030 dietary guidelines. The ERS chart itself does not measure any effect of the law, which came into force after the last year of its data.

Falling fluid sales do not mean the U.S. dairy herd is producing less. The monthly Milk Production report of USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), released on 23 January 2026, put total U.S. milk production at 225,868 million pounds in 2024 and 231,482 million pounds in 2025, an increase of 2.5 percent. The number of milk cows averaged 9.342 million head in 2024 and 9.490 million in 2025, and output per cow rose from 24,178 pounds to 24,392 pounds.

Production was growing quickly at the end of 2025. NASS reported that U.S. output in the October to December quarter totalled 57.8 billion pounds, up 4.2 percent from a year earlier, with an average of 9.56 million milk cows in the quarter. In the 24 major dairy states, December production was up 4.6 percent on December 2024.

Milk for drinking holds a special place in U.S. dairy pricing. The Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) system, authorised by the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, divides much of the country into geographically defined fluid-milk demand areas. A Congressional Research Service (CRS) brief of 24 February 2025 explains that within these orders USDA sets minimum prices that milk handlers, the processors, must pay farmers, and that the system is meant to ensure orderly marketing so that producers are treated fairly and consumers have an adequate supply of fluid milk.

Under the 1996 farm bill Congress required USDA to consolidate the system, which was reduced to 11 orders with new provisions taking effect in 2000. California joined the federal system in 2018, while Alaska and Hawaii are outside it. Within each order milk is classified by use into four classes:

• Class I: fluid milk for drinking.
• Class II: soft products such as cottage cheese and sour cream.
• Class III: cheese.
• Class IV: butter and nonfat dry milk.

The component values used to price each class, for butterfat, protein, nonfat solids and other solids, are based on wholesale prices of cheese, butter, nonfat dry milk and whey. On 17 January 2025 USDA published a final rule amending the uniform pricing formulas in all 11 orders, after a 49-day national hearing that began on 23 August 2023 and a vote of dairy producers in each order. Most of the changes took effect on 1 June 2025; new skim milk composition factors of 3.3 percent protein, 6.0 percent other solids and 9.3 percent nonfat solids were due from 1 December 2025.

For fluid milk the most important change, according to CRS, was the base Class I skim milk price, which returned to the higher of the advanced Class III or Class IV skim milk prices for the month in place of the average of the two. The rule also adopted an adjustment for extended shelf life milk, kept the lowest Class I differential at $1.60 per hundredweight with modified location-specific values, raised the manufacturing allowances and set the butterfat recovery factor at 91 percent. USDA's regulatory impact analysis, quoted by CRS, estimated that the amendments were likely to raise producer revenue and pool values by about 1.2 percent on average.

Photo: U.S. Department of Agriculture / Wikimedia Commons (public domain). A shopper in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) chooses a container of milk in the dairy aisle of a grocery store in North Charleston, South Carolina, in February 2025.

Sources: USDA Economic Research Service (Chart of Note, 2 April 2026; Dairy Data per capita consumption table, December 2025; Chart of Note, 15 August 2014; Amber Waves, 21 June 2022), Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025 and 2025-2030 (USDA and HHS), USDA Food and Nutrition Service (memo SP 01-2025, 7 October 2024), U.S. Food and Drug Administration (21 CFR 131.110), USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (Milk Production, 23 January 2026), Congressional Research Service (IF12923, 24 February 2025), DTN/Progressive Farmer (15 January 2026), Wikipedia (Whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act of 2025).