Is There a Milk Shortage Right Now? What’s Happening in the US

AvatarByEric Dawson Milk & Dairy

No, there is not a milk shortage in the United States as of September 2026. USDA’s Milk Production report released August 21, 2026 put July output at 20.1 billion pounds, up 2.2 percent from July 2025, with 199,000 more cows in the national herd than a year earlier. Both USDA’s September 11, 2026 supply and demand estimates and its August outlook expect 2026 to be the largest milk production year on record. When a shelf looks empty, the cause is almost always local: a bottling plant that closed, a delivery route that runs once or twice a week, a single brand that paused production, or a store that under-ordered. The sections below cover what the data says, why the gaps happen anyway, whether bird flu changes the picture, and what to do when your store is out.

Is There a Milk Shortage Right Now in the US? The Numbers Say No

Every national measure of milk supply is up. The searcher asking whether there is a milk shortage right now in the USA is usually reacting to an empty cooler or a viral post, and the federal data runs the other way in every month of 2026 so far.

What the Latest USDA Milk Production Report Shows

The National Agricultural Statistics Service publishes a monthly Milk Production report, and the August 21, 2026 edition is the most recent. It states that milk production in the United States during July totaled 20.1 billion pounds, up 2.2 percent from July 2025. Production per cow averaged 2,075 pounds for the month, 3 pounds above a year earlier. The number of milk cows on farms reached 9.71 million head, 199,000 more than July 2025 and unchanged from June. June’s figure was also revised upward, so the 24 major states ended up 3.1 percent ahead of June 2025 rather than the smaller gain first estimated.

Growth has been steady, not a one-month blip. The same report’s monthly table shows US production running ahead of 2025 in every month of 2026, by 3.5 percent in January, 2.9 percent in February, 2.7 percent in March and April, 2.1 percent in May, 3.0 percent in June, and 2.2 percent in July. Full-year 2025 production was 231.7 billion pounds according to the same table, itself a record.

What the Forecasts Say for the Rest of 2026 and 2027

USDA’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report of September 11, 2026 raised the 2026 milk production forecast to 237.2 billion pounds and the 2027 forecast to 238.6 billion pounds, stating that “both cow inventories and output per cow are raised for 2026 and 2027” on the strength of the latest Milk Production report. For context, the same table lists 225.9 billion pounds for 2024 and 231.7 billion for 2025. The Economic Research Service’s Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook of August 18, 2026 had the 2026 figure at 236.6 billion pounds before the September revision, so the two USDA documents differ by 0.6 billion pounds. Because the WASDE number is the later one and incorporates the July herd data, it is the figure to use.

Demand is growing more slowly than supply. The September WASDE projects fat-basis domestic use of 224.3 billion pounds in 2026 against 237.2 billion pounds of production, with exports absorbing much of the difference. According to the ERS outlook, first-half 2026 dairy exports were up 35.5 percent on a milk-fat basis, with butter exports up 90.2 percent, while domestic use rose 0.9 percent. A country exporting record volumes of butter and cheese is not one that is short of milk.

Why Do Shelves Look Empty if There’s No Milk Shortage

Empty coolers in 2026 are a distribution story, not a supply shortage. Milk is produced in every state, but bottled fluid milk is not, and most of the growth in US milk output is going to cheese and butter plants in the Plains, Texas, and the Upper Midwest while the fluid bottling network that serves grocery stores has been shrinking for years.

Fewer Bottling Plants and Longer Delivery Routes

Vermont is the clearest recent example. Seven Days, the Burlington weekly, reported in summer 2026 that four dairy plants in the state had closed or announced closures in roughly 18 months. The HP Hood plant in Barre, which bottled milk under the Booth Bros. label, closed in April 2026 and laid off about 70 workers. Dairy Farmers of America announced in June 2026 that it would shut its St. Albans creamery, costing 81 jobs, with the milk it handled rerouted to plants in New York, Maine, and Massachusetts. Farmers who used to deliver to Barre now pay to send milk to a Hood facility in Concord, New Hampshire. The state’s licensed dairy farm count fell from 838 in 2014 to 405 in 2026, according to the same report, which shrinks the local supply that any remaining plant can draw on.

Fuel is the other half of the distance problem. Gary Joiner of the Texas Farm Bureau told KSAT in a May 6, 2026 report that “the transportation cost of actually hauling milk from the farm to the processor and to the retail outlet is why milk prices are higher,” adding that about 92 percent of the milk moved in this country travels by diesel truck. USDA’s own Class I pricing formula for the Appalachian and Southeast orders used a diesel price of $5.146 per gallon for September 2026, which shows how expensive each extra mile of milk hauling has become.

Rural Distribution Gaps

KFYR-TV reported on March 12, 2026 that small towns in western North Dakota, including Glen Ullin and New Salem, have faced recurring milk gaps since the pandemic. North Dakota had more than 200 Grade A dairy farms in 2000 and fewer than 20 today, so stores rely on shipments from eastern North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Kansas, and those routes change. Allan Tellmann, who owns Tellmann’s Market in New Salem, said milk often arrives with “only 12, 15 days left” of shelf life, which forces small stores to order conservatively and run out between deliveries. Holly Hands, kitchen director at Glen Ullin Elementary, described a two-week stretch when the school could get white milk but no chocolate milk. State Representative Dawson Holle pointed to processing plants operating on thin margins as the underlying cause.

None of that is a national shortage. A town two hours from the nearest bottler will see gaps whenever a driver calls in sick or a road closes, even in a year when the country produces more milk than ever.

Brand-specific Gaps

Sometimes the empty spot on the shelf belongs to one label. On July 16, 2026, The Coca-Cola Company announced that its fairlife subsidiary had found “unauthorized access by a third party to a portion of its systems, including its production-related systems, in connection with a ransomware event,” and that US production at fairlife was temporarily suspended. Help Net Security reported on July 28, 2026 that fairlife had “resumed the majority of production across its four US manufacturing facilities” and that retail shelves stayed stocked from existing inventory. Any shopper who found that label missing in late July was looking at the aftermath of a cyberattack, not a dairy supply problem, and regular gallons from other brands never moved.

Store Ordering and Short Shelf Life

Fluid milk carries a code date of about 21 to 22 days from bottling according to the North Dakota retailer quoted by KFYR, and by the time it reaches a distant store much of that is gone. Retailers order tight because unsold milk is a total loss. Holiday weeks, back-to-school in late August, and the first cold snap all shift demand faster than automated ordering catches up. The result is a cooler that is bare on Sunday evening and full on Tuesday morning, which is the pattern most people are describing when they ask about milk shortages at grocery stores.

Is Bird Flu Causing a Milk Shortage

Bird flu in dairy cattle is real and ongoing, but its effect on national supply in 2026 is small enough to be invisible in the production numbers.

How Many Herds Are Affected in 2026

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) reported in August 2026 that 85 cattle herds had confirmed H5N1 infections so far in 2026, compared with 171 outbreaks in all of 2025 and 917 herds in 2024, the year the virus was first found in cows. In the 30 days before that report, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service had confirmed three new dairy herds, two in Texas and one in Utah. CIDRAP also noted that APHIS had gone nearly 30 days without posting updates before those detections appeared, so anyone tracking the outbreak should expect occasional gaps in the federal tally.

Infected herds lose milk for a few weeks while cows recover, and that milk is diverted from the supply. Set against a national herd of 9.71 million cows producing 20.1 billion pounds a month, 85 affected herds in eight months does not register at the grocery level. The 2024 wave, at 917 herds, coincided with California’s production falling for several months, and California is still 0.8 percent below its July 2025 output according to the August NASS report, but every other major region has more than made up for it.

Is the Milk in Stores Safe

The Food and Drug Administration’s investigation page, last updated March 14, 2025, says the agency “is confident that pasteurization is effective at inactivating H5N1, and that the commercial, pasteurized milk supply is safe.” Its first retail survey tested 297 samples from 38 states and 132 processing locations, and a second tested 167 samples; neither found viable virus in any pasteurized product. That same FDA page continues to advise strongly against drinking raw milk, which is unpasteurized and has been linked to illness outbreaks well before bird flu appeared in cattle. Anyone with a health condition that makes them cautious about dairy should check with their doctor, but pasteurized milk from the store carries no H5N1 warning from any federal agency.

How Much Does Milk Cost Right Now

A gallon of fortified whole milk cost $4.229 on average in August 2026, per Bureau of Labor Statistics data published by the St. Louis Fed’s FRED database. Prices eased slightly at the end of summer, down from $4.313 in July and $4.317 in June, though still $0.06 above the $4.171 recorded in August 2025. That is a year-over-year rise of about 1.4 percent, which is a stable market rather than a scarce one.

Why Prices Differ so Much by City

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service surveys the three largest grocery chains in 30 cities early each month. Its Retail Milk Prices Report dated August 27, 2026 puts the simple national average at $4.05 per gallon for conventional whole milk, $4.01 for 2 percent, and $5.18 per half gallon for organic whole milk, as of August 2026. The spread between cities is wide.

City Conventional whole milk, August 2026 (per gallon) Compared with the $4.05 US average
Chicago, IL $6.04 $1.99 above
Philadelphia, PA $5.46 $1.41 above
Sacramento, CA $5.19 $1.14 above
Pittsburgh, PA $5.13 $1.08 above
Minneapolis, MN $5.01 $0.96 above
New York, NY $4.73 $0.68 above
Washington, DC $4.19 $0.14 above
Boston, MA $3.66 $0.39 below
Houston, TX $3.21 $0.84 below
Phoenix, AZ $3.07 $0.98 below
Cincinnati, OH $2.97 $1.08 below
Wichita, KS $2.91 $1.14 below
Dallas, TX $2.83 $1.22 below
Louisville, KY $2.73 $1.32 below

Source: USDA AMS Retail Milk Prices Report RMP-0826, August 2026 column, most common brand at the three largest food store chains in each city. A Chicago shopper pays more than double the Louisville price for the same gallon, and neither city is short of milk. Local chain pricing strategy, the number of competing bottlers in a region, and how far the milk travels to reach the store explain far more of the difference than supply does.

What Farmers Are Being Paid

The price signal at the farm gate points to plenty, not scarcity. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service announced on August 19, 2026 that the base Class I price, the minimum paid for milk that goes into bottles under federal orders, is $17.04 per hundredweight for September 2026, down $1.72 from August. The ERS outlook reported the June 2026 all-milk price at $21.10 per hundredweight, $0.20 below June 2025, and the September WASDE forecasts an all-milk average of $19.90 for 2026 and $19.80 for 2027, both below the $21.18 average of 2025 and the $22.55 of 2024. Falling farm prices during a period of rising output are the textbook sign of a market with more milk than buyers, and they are one reason marginal plants like the ones in Vermont are closing.

What Is Happening to the US Dairy Herd

America’s dairy herd is growing, and it is growing in different places than it used to. USDA’s mid-year Cattle report, summarized in the August 18, 2026 ERS outlook, counted 3.600 million dairy replacement heifers on July 1, 2026, 100,000 more than a year earlier, with the ratio of replacements to milk cows holding at 37 percent. Culling ran higher in the first 30 weeks of 2026 than in 2025, but the outlook notes the cow slaughter rate stayed low against the three-year average, which is why the herd kept expanding. ERS expects the herd to average 9.665 million cows in 2026 and 9.695 million in 2027.

Where the new cows are shows up in the state table of the August NASS report. Kansas produced 494 million pounds in July 2026, up 15.4 percent from July 2025, after adding 32,000 cows. Texas reached 1,612 million pounds, up 4.4 percent, with 26,000 more cows. South Dakota rose 6.8 percent, Oregon 6.4 percent, Florida 5.8 percent, and Indiana 5.0 percent. Wisconsin, the second-largest producer, grew 2.6 percent to 2,851 million pounds. On the other side, California, the largest state, slipped 0.8 percent to 3,479 million pounds with 1,000 fewer cows, Washington fell 2.0 percent, and Ohio dipped 0.4 percent.

New cheese and ingredient plants in the Plains and Texas are pulling that milk. Cheese exports in the first half of 2026 were up 11.1 percent for American types and 27.6 percent for other varieties according to the ERS outlook, which also expects higher 2026 export volumes for cheese, butter, and fluid milk and cream products. The practical result for a shopper in Vermont or western North Dakota is that milk production is booming 1,500 miles away while the nearby bottler has closed, and those two facts together are what “there’s a milk shortage” usually means in conversation.

What to Do if Your Store Is Out of Milk

If your store is out of milk, the fastest fix is to check the delivery day and shop the morning after, since small-town stores in the KFYR report follow fixed truck routes and most gaps close within a day or two. A bare cooler is almost always temporary.

  1. Check the delivery day. Ask a dairy department employee which days the milk truck comes. Small-town stores in the KFYR report got deliveries on fixed routes, and shopping the morning after a delivery avoids most gaps.
  2. Switch fat level or size. Whole milk, 2 percent, and 1 percent are bottled at the same plant from the same tank. If gallons of 2 percent are gone, half gallons of whole milk are usually still there, and the AMS survey shows 2 percent and whole milk priced within $0.04 of each other nationally.
  3. Try a different brand or the store label. Most store-brand milk comes from a regional cooperative plant, and a national brand’s problem (the fairlife pause in July 2026 is the example) does not touch it.
  4. Look at shelf-stable and ultra-pasteurized options. Aseptic cartons of milk sit in the baking or juice aisle, keep for months unopened, and are made from the same milk. Ultra-pasteurized cartons in the cooler carry noticeably longer code dates than standard milk.
  5. Check a second store type. Pharmacies, dollar stores, and warehouse clubs use different distributors, so a gap at one chain rarely appears at all of them on the same day.

If It Still Isn’t There After a Week

Any gap that lasts longer than one delivery cycle means a route or plant change, not a demand spike. Ask the store manager whether their dairy supplier changed; the Vermont closures rerouted milk through plants in three other states, and stores in the affected area needed weeks to settle into new schedules. For a school or daycare, the North Dakota report showed that chocolate milk is the first item to disappear because it is a lower-volume line, and switching an order to white milk plus a separate flavoring gets around it. Powdered milk and canned evaporated milk cover cooking needs until fresh milk returns, and both are made from the same domestic supply that is currently at record volume.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will There Be a Milk Shortage Later in 2026 or in 2027?

Not on current data. USDA’s September 11, 2026 WASDE projects 237.2 billion pounds of milk in 2026 and 238.6 billion in 2027, each a new record, with the herd expected to grow further. Forecasts can change if disease, drought, or feed costs shift, but the September 2026 revision moved the production number up and the August outlook had left it unchanged, so the trend in the estimates is not toward scarcity.

Why Is Milk so Expensive in Chicago but Cheap in Dallas?

The August 2026 AMS survey put Chicago at $6.04 per gallon and Dallas at $2.83 for conventional whole milk. Retailer pricing strategy, how many bottlers compete in each region, and hauling distance explain the gap, not Chicago having less milk. Illinois and Wisconsin together produced more milk in July 2026 than Texas did, according to the NASS state table.

Does a Bird Flu Outbreak in Cows Mean Milk Gets Recalled?

No recall of pasteurized milk has been tied to H5N1. The FDA describes “diversion or destruction of abnormal milk” as one of the two pillars of the federal-state milk safety system alongside pasteurization, and its two retail surveys found no viable virus in pasteurized products. Raw milk is the exception the agency warns about, since it is not pasteurized and is a separate product from what grocery stores sell as milk.

Is the Milk Shortage Talk on Social Media About the US or Somewhere Else?

Much of it is historical or foreign. The 2023 school milk gap in the US was a half-pint carton shortage traced to packaging supplier Pactiv Evergreen, as Packaging Dive reported in November 2023, not a shortage of milk, and posts about tariffs blocking milk imports have no support in USDA trade data, which shows imports rising 7.6 percent on a milk-fat basis in the first half of 2026. Before sharing a shortage warning, check the date and the country in the original post.

Are Farmers Going Out of Business if There Is so Much Milk?

Some are, and that is part of why local gaps happen. Falling farm prices, with the Class I base at $17.04 per hundredweight for September 2026 and the all-milk forecast below 2024 and 2025 levels, squeeze small farms and older plants hardest. Vermont’s farm count dropped from 838 to 405 between 2014 and 2026, while Kansas and Texas added cows, so the national total rises even as some regions lose their local supply.

Treat an empty milk cooler as a scheduling problem rather than a supply problem. Ask when the truck comes, buy a different size or fat level, keep a shelf-stable carton in the pantry for the odd week, and check USDA’s monthly Milk Production report if a headline claims a national shortage; as of September 2026 that report shows more milk, more cows, and lower farm prices than a year ago.

References

  • Milk Production, August 2026 (July data), released August 21, 2026, USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service, read September 2026
  • World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, WASDE-675, September 11, 2026, USDA Office of the Chief Economist, read September 2026
  • Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry Outlook: August 2026 (LDP-M-386), USDA Economic Research Service, read September 2026
  • Announcement of Advanced Prices and Pricing Factors for September 2026, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, read September 2026
  • Retail Milk Prices Report, August 2026 (RMP-0826), USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, read September 2026
  • Average Price: Milk, Fresh, Whole, Fortified (Cost per Gallon) in U.S. City Average, FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (BLS data), read September 2026
  • Investigation of Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Virus in Dairy Cattle, US Food and Drug Administration, read September 2026
  • USDA confirms new H5N1 avian flu cases in poultry, dairy cattle, CIDRAP, University of Minnesota, read September 2026
  • Milk shortages squeeze rural North Dakota communities, KFYR-TV, read September 2026
  • The Closures of Four Dairy Plants Lead to Worry in Vermont, Seven Days, read September 2026
  • The Coca-Cola Company Announces Technology Disruption Involving fairlife Operations, fairlife, read September 2026
  • Coca-Cola confirms hackers stole data in Fairlife ransomware attack, Help Net Security, read September 2026
  • Rising beef and milk prices driven by drought, supply shortages, KSAT, read September 2026
  • Schumer calls for USDA investigation into nationwide milk carton shortage, Packaging Dive, read September 2026

Author Profile

Eric Dawson
Eric Dawson
Eric Dawson is the writer and curious mind behind The Money Watch. Based in Columbus, Ohio, he has a habit of digging into everyday questions until he understands what is actually going on, whether the subject is technology, travel, shopping, food, business, consumer products, or one of life's oddly specific problems.

Rather than pretending to be an expert in everything he covers, Eric approaches each topic as a careful researcher and practical problem-solver. He favors original sources, clear explanations, and honest answers about uncertainty. His goal is simple: do the digging readers shouldn't have to do themselves and turn what he finds into useful information without wasting their time.