CONTINUED low milk prices worldwide - often well below the cost of production - are at long last beginning to effect cow numbers across the key dairy exporting nations, which could eventually over-ride the crisis in the dairy industry.

According to figures from AHDB Dairy, global milk production fell between October, 2015 and January, 2016, with the daily milk equivalent reduced by 1.6%, and production dropping across all of the five regions, including the EU, New Zealand, Australia, the US and Argentina.

Even the slight uplift in deliveries in February, which crept up by 0.3%, on the back of increases across all regions except Argentina, is not causing too much concern, given that a similar one-off rise was seen between September and October last year.

However, EU data is currently only available up to February and the biggest volume contributors, the EU and US, are now into their peak production months.

Dairy cattle numbers from a number of EU countries do point to a marginal fall this year, with the EU Beef Forecasting Working Group figures suggesting dairy cows from the seven major milk producing EU countries, will fall by 83,000 head (0.5%) between 2015 and 2016.

Growth is, nevertheless, likely to continue in the Netherlands and Ireland as cow numbers are expected to rise 25,000 and 70,000 head, respectively - despite reports that Dutch farmers should be culling 60,000-100,000 cows before the end of 2016 to comply with EU phosphate limits.

In the UK, a marginal increase is also forecast with figures expected to rise from 1,918,000 in 2015 to 1,923,000.

But, while a slight growth in the UK dairy herd is predicted, data from BCMS for the first quarter of 2016 shows an increase in the number of culls amongst dairy heifers.

Their data points to deaths of dairy females aged two years or older rising 9000 head, or 8% compared to the same period in 2015. Even considering the seasonal nature of the industry, recorded dairy female deaths have been on an upward trend over the past two years, especially among younger animals.

Looking at deaths relative to the dairy female population by age supports this finding, with the most recent data for the final quarter of 2015 showing a small but steady increase in the percentage of deaths relative to the population, suggesting that culling rates are exceed replacement rates.

During this time, there were roughly 7500 fewer dairy females aged two years or older in the fourth quarter of 2015, compared to the previous year.

And, in spite of the doom and gloom surrounding the slow down of the Chinese economy, dairy products showed one of the strongest growth results in China's food and beverage market in 2015. This was driven mostly by an increased number of consumers and supplied primarily by imports.

According to a recent report by Kantar Worldpanel China, the liquid milk market, which includes yoghurts, saw sales increase by 7.5% in 2015. This compares to an average growth rate of 2.1% for the whole food and beverage sector.

Imports increased their share of the market from 10% to 16%, as prices were well below domestic levels.

Per capita, consumption of dairy products has, however, remained relatively flat over the past five years, at around 60 litres/annum. Kantar's research has also shown that households with young or teenage children in them tend to have higher consumption than adult households.

Per capita consumption for households with younger families was 62 litres/annum, roughly 4.5 litres more than the average for adult households.

Levels of per capita consumption remain low, at about 20% of the average in the EU, suggesting a great deal of growth potential still exists, especially for products geared towards younger consumers.