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Immigrants are holding up the Kansas dairy industry

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There’s a chance your next bowl of cereal or protein shake will include milk that came from Kansas. Dairy production in the state has quadrupled over the last couple decades, and that growth rests on the shoulders of immigrant workers in rural Kansas.

Kansas has one of the fastest growing dairy industries in the country. The state has added on almost 50,000 milk cows to its herd in just the last year. All that growth requires immigrant labor to keep up with demand. Calen Moore of the Kansas News Service takes us inside the growing dairy industry.

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Kansas City Today is hosted by Nomin Ujiyediin. It is produced by Seth Jahraus and KCUR Studios, and edited by Gabe Rosenberg, Madeline Fox and Emily Younker.

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As a newscaster and a host of a daily news podcast, I want to deliver the most important and interesting news of the day in an engaging and easily understandable way. No matter where you live in the metro or what you’re interested in, I want you to learn something from each newscast or podcast – and maybe even give you something to talk about at the dinner table.
Seth Jahraus is the 2026 summer intern for KCUR Studios. Email him at seth.jahraus@kcur.org.
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