A Day Without Dairy

Students create, read, and interpret graphs relating to the economic importance of the dairy industry and are challenged to understand the economic consequences of a day without dairy.

Grades: 3 – 5
Estimated Time: 70 minutes
Updated: August 13, 2024

Background

Materials Needed

For class:

Index cards for vocabulary review

For each group:

Markers
Scissors
Glue or paste

For each student:

A Day Without Dairy activity sheet
A Day Without Dairy Activity Sheet Key
Empty, clean, single-serving milk carton
Graph paper

Vocabulary

agricultural economist: a career to collect data and analyze graphs to determine the best marketing options for farmers

Background Agricultural Connections

This lesson is part of a series called, Milk Matters: Discovering Dairy. These lessons introduce students to the history, production, nutritional value and economic significance of the dairy industry. Other related lessons include:

Cowabunga! All About Breeds
Sun, to Moo, to You!
Milk Makin' Math
The Ultimate Efficient Recycler
A Day Without Dairy

Milk and cream are the essential ingredients for all dairy products, a general term used to describe food and beverages made from milk. This includes everything from sweet ice cream to a glassful of nutrient-packed milk. Dairy products are a diverse group of food items. Just think of the hundreds of varieties of cheese alone! California has been the nation’s leading dairy state since 1993 when it surpassed Wisconsin in milk production.

The price of dairy products is determined by many different factors. The products go through several stages of processing that may include health testing, pasteurization, packaging and transportation. When we pay for dairy products at the grocery store, we are also paying for the cost of fuel to transport the product to the processing plant and then to the retail location. When you think about the cost of production, which could include technology, machinery, feed prices, maintenance, veterinary services, farm employees and more, the consumer quickly realizes the money he or she pays for nutritious dairy products supports many workers who help along the way.

Dairy products not consumed in the United States are exported worldwide. Exporting is sending milk, dairy products or any other commodity abroad for trade or sale. People throughout the world are enjoying dairy products from California. Many factors affect the amount of dairy products exported every year, including world weather conditions, natural disasters, market regulations and demand. For example, in recent years, exports of dairy products from the U.S. have increased due to droughts in other dairy-producing nations.

With all these facts, it’s hard to imagine a day without dairy.

More information on the dairy industry can be found here.

Lesson Activities

Engage

Place a series of dominos where your class can see. If dominoes are not available you could also stand several books up in a row.
Ask your students what would happen if you knock down one of the dominoes. Your students should recognize that tipping one domino over will have a chain reaction and the remaining dominos will also be tipped over. Sometimes this is called a "domino effect." Review with your students that the dairy industry is a portion of agriculture that provides milk to our diets. Ask your students what would happen without the dairy industry.
In this lesson, students will:
- create, read and interpret graphs related to dairy’s economic impact; and
- explore the economic consequences of a day without dairy.

Explore and Explain

Activity 1: Economy of the Dairy Industry

Take a poll of the class to determine the students’ favorite type of cheese: Mozzarella, American, Cheddar or Swiss. Create a chart on the board to record the students’ responses to the poll. Ask the students what type of graph should be used to illustrate the information. Students can work in groups or as a class to create the appropriate graph.
Review with the students the purpose of graphs in displaying important information. A large part of an economist’s job is collecting data, creating graphs and interpreting those graphs to determine changes in the market. Why would it be beneficial for someone in the dairy industry (or any other agriculture industry) to be interested in the changes within the agriculture market?
Explain that economists and dairy farmers alike use graphs to determine the importance of dairy product sales in the economy. In this lesson, students will create and read different graphs to better understand the role of dairy in our daily lives.
It may be helpful to work with students in creating a “word wall” of vocabulary words they will read and write during the lesson. Place definitions of challenging vocabulary words on the board, depending on the grade level. Pass out index cards featuring corresponding vocabulary words to each group. Have the groups take turns matching their vocabulary words to the correct definitions. Direct students to orally use the words in a sentence and/or record the definitions on a sepa piece of paper.
Have the students complete the A Day Without Dairy activity sheet.
Discuss the economic impacts of a day without dairy. Work with the students to estimate the quantity of milk consumed daily in California (or substitute your state). For example, poll the class to determine the amount of dairy products the class consumes daily. Use multiplication to estimate the amount of dairy products consumed by the entire school, city, state, and country. Discuss with the class:
- The amount of money lost in a day without dairy
- The dairy industry’s impact on jobs and employment
- The basic concept of supply and demand
- If California stopped producing milk, how would we get dairy products? How would this affect prices at the store?
Review the activity. Have the students review their learning by creating “A Day Without Dairy” milk carton. Instruct the students to decorate a milk carton depicting newly-acquired concepts on each side. If time allows, they can make their carton colorful and creative.
- Side 1
  - Title: A Day Without Dairy, Drawing, Name
- Side 2
  - Answer the following question, using complete sentences, on lined paper. What would a day without dairy be like? A year? Paste your response to the milk carton.
- Side 3
  - Paste a copy of the bar graph you created illustrating exports from the United States, Canada and Russia.
- Side 4
  - On a separate piece of paper, list all vocabulary words learned, including definitions. Paste your list to the milk carton.

Variations

Have the students create a chart reflecting the data graphed for cheddar cheese production in California (found on the A Day Without Dairy activity sheet). Using the chart they created, students find mean, median, mode and range.
Have the students work in groups to make milk carton review tools, substituting the pint-sized container with a half-gallon milk carton. Invite the students to summarize their findings in front of the class.
This lesson investigates the economic importance of dairy. If you teach in the following states, refer to your local agricultural literacy resources about dairy:

Maine

Elaborate

Visit the Interactive Map Project website and view the Dairy Cattle Inventory map. As a class, identify the highest milk producing states and discuss the factors which could contribute to the success of dairy farms, such as climate, open space, etc. Identify where your state ranks in dairy cattle production and discuss the factors contributing to the statistic.
Read Issue 1 of Ag Today titled Agriculture is Everywhere! This reader can be accessed digitally. It describes the connections humans make daily with agriculture from business and science to the practices of growing and selling row crops and animals to be used for food, fiber, and fuel.
Have the students work in groups to determine statistics they would like to discover about the dairy industry. Students should research and collect the needed information, determine the appropriate type of graph to use, and create a graph that accurately represents the information they collected. The groups will take turns presenting their findings to the class.
Arrange a field trip to a grocery store where the students can record the prices for commonly consumed dairy products. Have the students keep a “My Day of Dairy” food journal and determine the amount of money spent on the dairy products they personally eat each day.
Have the students research factors contributing to dairy product sales. What causes an increase or decrease? Use online tools, write a letter to a dairy farmer, or invite a dairy farmer to your class for sources of answers to these (and other) questions about the dairy industry.

Evaluate

After conducting these activities, review and summarize the following key concepts:

The agricultural industry is valuable to our daily life.
Farmers care for their animals needs by providing food, water, and shelter.
The dairy industry plays a part in our economy.

Recommended Companion Resources

Booklet/Reader • Ag Today
Book • Chuck's Ice Cream Wish (Tales of the Dairy Godmother)
Book • Clarabelle
Booklet/Reader • Dairy Reader
Movie/Video • Dairy Tour 360
Movie/Video • Dairy in the Mountain West: Our Family of Farmers
Website • Discover Dairy
Movie/Video • From Moo to You Video
Book • Has a Cow Saved Your Life?
Book • Ice Cream Everywhere: Sweet Stories from Around the World
Book • Ice Cream Man: How Augustus Jackson Made a Sweet Treat Better
Book • Ice Cream: The Full Scoop
Book • It's Milking Time
Movie/Video • Make Mine Milk
Book • Milk Comes From a Cow?
Movie/Video • Moo 2 You (DVD)
Movie/Video • NMSU Field Trip: Milk
Book • The Day the Farmers Quit
Movie/Video • The Journey of Milk
Book • The Milk Makers

Credits

Author

Mandi Bottoms | California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom

Acknowledgements

This lesson was funded in 2008 by the California Milk Advisory Board and the California Farm Bureau Federation. To meet the needs of California educators, Milk Matters: Discovering Dairy was created to meet the Curriculum Content Standards for California Public Schools. The unit also includes a collection of relevant resources about the dairy industry.

Executive Director: Judy Culbertson
Layout and Design: Imelda Muziom

Standards

National Content Area Standards

Social Studies – Economics
- Economics Standard 7 (Grades 3-5): Market and Prices
  - Objective (Grades 3-5): Identify markets in which they have participated as a buyer and as a seller and describe how the interaction of all buyers and sellers influences prices. Also, predict how prices change when there is either a shortage or surplus of the product available.
- Economics Standard 8 (Grades 3-5): Role of Prices
  - Objective (Grades 3-5): Predict how changes in factors such as consumers' tastes or producers' technology affect prices.
- Economics Standard 9 (Grades 3-5): Competition and Market Structure
  - Objective (Grades 3-5): Explain how changes in the level of competition in different markets can affect price and output levels.

Agricultural Literacy Outcomes

Agriculture and the Environment
- Recognize the natural resources used in agricultural practices to produce food, feed, clothing, landscaping plants, and fuel (e.g., soil, water, air, plants, animals, and minerals) (T1.3-5.e)
Culture, Society, Economy & Geography
- Explain the value of agriculture and how it is important in daily life. (T5.3-5.d)
Plants and Animals for Food, Fiber & Energy
- Provide examples of specific ways farmers meet the needs of animals (T2.3-5.d)

Common Core Standards

Anchor Standards – Language
- CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.L.1: Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English grammar and usage when writing or speaking.
Practice Standards – Mathematics
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. Students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution. They analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals. They make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution and plan a solution pathway rather than simply jumping into a solution attempt. They consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem in order to gain insight into its solution. They monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary. Students check their answers to problems using a different method, and they continually ask themselves, “Does this make sense?” They can understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems and identify correspondences between different approaches.
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP4: Model with mathematics. Students can apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace. Students who can apply what they know are comfortable making assumptions and approximations to simplify a complicated situation, realizing that these may need revision later. They are able to identify important quantities in a practical situation and map their relationships using such tools as diagrams, two-way tables, graphs, flowcharts and formulas. They can analyze those relationships mathematically to draw conclusions.
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP5: Use appropriate tools strategically. Students consider the available tools when solving a mathematical problem. These tools might include pencil and paper, concrete models, a ruler, a protractor, a calculator, a spreadsheet, a computer algebra system, a statistical package, or dynamic geometry software. Students at various grade levels are able to identify relevant external mathematical resources, such as digital content located on a website, and use them to pose or solve problems. They are able to use technological tools to explore and deepen their understandings of concepts.
- CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6: Attend to precision. Students try to communicate precisely to others. They try to use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning. They state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the equal sign consistently and appropriately. They are careful about specifying units of measure, and labeling axes to clarify the correspondence with quantities in a problem. They calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the problem context.

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