Giuseppe Alai wanders through the cellar of his dairy in Emilia-Romagna, the air filled with the smell of ageing wheels of parmesan lined up in endless rows. Pointing towards the thick rinds wrapped around them, each bearing the distinct dotted engraving of their Parmigiano Reggiano mark of origin, he recalls an anecdote from his grandfather at the end of the second world war.
According to the World Population Review, New Zealand leads the world by a pretty wide margin, with Kiwis eating on average 3.9 kilograms per person per year - that's about 34.5 sticks of butter. This makes perfect sense when you consider that New Zealand is actually one of the most prolific butter producers in world. Per the USDA, despite being roughly the size of Colorado, this island nation produces a whopping 4% of the world's butter, or about 515,000 tons annually.
To produce chocolate milk efficiently, dairies don’t use cocoa powder one tablespoon at a time. Instead, they create a chocolate syrup by blooming cocoa powder in hot water and then sweetening and reducing it into a concentrate.
Extreme heat reduces dairy cows' ability to produce milk by 10%. Just one hour of wet-bulb temperature above 26C can reduce a cow's daily milk production by 0.5%. Exposure to high temperatures also has a prolonged effect, with milk production still lower than typical levels up to 10 days after the initial hot day.