SALEM, Ohio — More than a quarter of Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers are considering retirement in the near future, according to the results of a recent survey.
When asked about their plans for the next 3 to 5 years, many of the nearly 800 farmers who responded to the questionnaire from the Center for Dairy Excellence Penn State Extension said they were considering moving on from farming and leaving their operation to a new generation.
Additionally, milk producers have a heightened interest in production costs in 2025 compared to 2020, and are highly focused on future investments. Respondents also said they want to increase herd size, upgrade their facilities, use new technologies and increase production from individual cows.
The survey questioned 777 farmers in 49 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, representing between 12-15% of dairy farms in Pennsylvania.
Some of the results indicate that many farmers are planning to retire, according to a summary of the survey results posted online. Twenty-seven percent of respondents said they were looking to transition out of the business and leave the farm to the next generation. Another 7% said they plan to stop milking cows in that same time frame.
The 2020 survey did not ask about retirement, making a comparison between the two time periods difficult.
The summary also did not include information about the ages of farmers who responded to the university’s questionnaire. Although 79% of respondents said they have been in the dairy industry for more than 15 years. The average age of a Pennsylvania farmer is 55.4 years old, according to the 2022 Census of Agriculture.
The results also seem to indicate that most farmers are thinking about their future on the land, even if they plan to stay in dairy farming.
Twenty-two percent of respondents to the 2025 survey said they wanted to modernize their farms, while 18% said they planned to expand and 15% said they intended to invest in more land.
However, the farmers surveyed expressed little interest in changing their farming techniques. Only 1.3% said they planned to convert to organic farming, and just 1.5% said they would convert to grazing their cattle.
More farmers are paying attention to the costs of doing business, the survey results show.
Fifty-four percent of the farmers surveyed in 2025 said they had calculated their production costs. In the 2020 survey, that figure was just 29%.
That difference “indicates that more producers understand their cost of production now than they did in 2020,” the survey summary said.
The researchers who conducted the survey did not speculate about why this figure changed. However, many of the farmers’ input costs — such as fertilizer and animal feed — have increased dramatically in the past five years.
Other highlights
• 78% (603 farms) are still producing milk for sale while 22% (174) are not longer producing milk for sale.
• Dairy was the sole source of income for 69% of respondents.
• 75 respondents said they employ full-time, part-time or seasonal Latino workers.
