One State Makes Way More Butter Than Any Of The Others

If you had to guess which one state produces the most butter in the United States, which would you pick? Nope, it's not Wisconsin, despite the fact it's known as "America's Dairyland." The answer is actually California. Data published in 2024 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) says California produced just over 680 million pounds of the golden good stuff in 2023. This accounted for 32.2% of America's total butter production, which was 2.12 billion pounds of butter. Imagine how many Olympic-sized pools that would fill.

In fact, California is the leading U.S. producer of dairy by volume. It's followed by Wisconsin, Idaho, Texas, and New York. California overtook Wisconsin's number one spot as top dairy producer in 1993, but Wisconsin is still America's leading producer of cheese — so Wisconsinites still have that claim to fame. One retail California butter manufacturer, California Dairies, churns out a whopping 480 million pounds of California's total yield of butter yearly. It should come as no surprise that California Dairies is the largest retail butter maker in the United States.

Depending on where you live in the States, your supermarket butter might look more different than you realize. Butters made on the eastern side of the United States have a long, narrow shape, while butters made on the west coast come in a short, squat format thanks to different manufacturing processes. The eastern side acquires that long skinny shape from equipment developed by the Elgin Butter Co. (from Elgin, Illinois). As technology evolved, west coast butter manufacturers came up with their own shape, hence the shorter appearance.

The quantity, thankfully, is the same amount, meaning you'll still get eight tablespoons of butter in each package. If you're shopping for a butter dish, you will need to account for which type of butter you tend pick up at the grocery store. And, to add to the confusion, luxuriously rich European butter is oftentimes shaped like a flat rectangle, which is also something you'll want to account for when shopping for a butter dish.

So, the shape is one easy way to know if you're spreading California's butter bounty on your morning toast. And that would be a tiny pat among millions, since when it comes to butter, California really churns away when it comes to making the good stuff.