Apr. 1—New Mexico is home to multiple national laboratories and is the second-largest oil-producing state in the country. There are thriving space and technology ecosystems here.

A perhaps lesser known industry, which also generates billions of dollars of economic output annually and creates thousands of jobs across the state, is dairy production.

New Mexico is one of the largest dairy farming states in the country. New Mexico State University officials report it is the ninth-leading state in milk production and the fourth-leading cheese producer.

“After California, after Wisconsin, Vermont is a big milk producer, but we are up there,” said Lissa Knudsen, the president of the board of the New Mexico Cheese Guild. “We have really fantastic policies and climates for milk production. … Dairy is the No. 1 agricultural product of our state. It eclipses things like pecans or green chile even.”

The recently formed New Mexico Cheese Guild was created to support cheesemakers in the Land of Enchantment. A goal of the association is to support small-scale farms, such as those with 100 animals or fewer, or even smaller backyard farmsteads with five or six goats to make cheese and milk for a family or a local growers’ market, according to Knudsen.

“This is sort of a different way of approaching our food production,” Knudsen said. “It is about staying local and staying small scale and using more traditional methods that are less harmful, both to the animals, but also the environment. That’s why we exist even though there’s this huge dairy history in this state. We’re looking to really support the local, tiny, small cheese producer.”

The New Mexico State University Extension Service estimates that the dairy industry has a $2.2 billion direct economic impact in the state annually and an additional $4.2 billion in indirect impact. The office estimates the industry supports more than 20,000 jobs.

The office reported last year that 50,000 pounds of raw milk are shipped daily from New Mexico dairy farms to dairy processors, primarily within the state.

Being one of the top dairy states means not only an abundance of milk production but also the production of products made with milk, including cheese.

To support the cheesemaking industry, the state recently allocated $200,000 for the New Mexico Cheesemaker Incubator, an economic development project aimed at fostering the growth of the local cheese industry, Knudsen said.

“When I was up in Santa Fe this last session I talked to a couple legislators, and they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve taken a tour of the largest cheese factory in the nation, which is in Clovis, New Mexico,'” she said. “We have this really robust, industrial dairy production process.”

The New Mexico Cheesemaker Incubator will foster cheesemaking skills through specialized classes on different parts of a cheesemaking operation, including production techniques, quality control and business management.

The guild is working with Street Food Institute to renovate a building on Fourth and Bell streets in Barelas.

“We’re hoping to be able to convert one of the units in that storehouse to a cheese aging space,” Knudson said.

The space would serve cheesemakers in the community who do not have the resources to invest in a cheese cave that can be maintained at the right temperature and humidity to age cheese.

“They can then go through the process to have their cheese aged in our space, and we’ll then give it the seal that comes with the New Mexico Cheese Guild and help them with getting it distributed,” Knudsen said. “And hopefully, they’ll be able to make some money and have a career based on cheesemaking.”

The incubator has the potential to be a catalyst for economic growth, job creation and increasing artisanal cheese-making in the state. Amanda Brown, a goat herder and owner of Brown’s Micro-Creamery in Corrales, plans on using the incubator. She said she is experiencing the benefits of being part of the guild.

“Honestly, the New Mexico Cheese Guild, it’s been really great just meeting everyone and networking and forming this community around cheese, and just this idea of making cheese a thing in New Mexico,” Brown said. “We’re already a dairy state. Let’s take it on to the next level.”

Brown has a herd of 15 Nubian goats at her micro-creamery. She is planning to build a USDA Grade A facility on her property so she can sell the milk her goats produce wholesale.

“It’s a lot of capital to invest in all the equipment and everything,” Brown said. “So it’s taken us some time, but that’s our goal.”

The incubator could be a catalyst to help Brown and other cheesemakers meet their goals. She is hoping to take advantage of it. She said the facility could help her improve her cheesemaking skills, navigate regulation and network with other people in the industry. Having a place to age her cheese would also assist her business.

“There’s a lot of small farms like mine,” Brown said. “A lot of people who have goats, they have milk, and pretty soon you just have so much milk and you have so much cheese. And, you start to think, what would it take for me to open it up?”

Erica De Smet is a member of the New Mexico Cheese Guild and the founder of De Smet Dairy & Creamery in Bosque Farms. The dairy specializes in raw milk and also uses it to create cheese. De Smet also produces yogurt and sells eggs and locally grown produce.

“We are New Mexico’s only 100% grass fed dairy farm,” De Smet said. “Our cows are A2 Jersey cows, and they are 100% grass fed and 100% free grazing, which means they’re never confined. We only milk once a day because we leave babies with mom. Our primary product is fresh milk.”

De Smet Dairy has been operating for 10 years. De Smet began creating cheese curds a couple years ago after being inspired after a trip to a dairy in Tillamook, Oregon.

“We honestly just looked up a couple of different recipes online, started to play with it in our kitchen just to find out what would work best with our milk and then just proceeded from there,” De Smet said of learning how to make cheese curds. “It was a process of elimination from recipes that we found online.”

De Smet uses excess milk from her dairy to create the cheese curds.

“You can find them all over the state, when we do have them available, all the way from Taos down to Las Cruces,” De Smet said. “Obviously our most popular cheese curds are (our) green chile cheese curds. Of course, we had to add green chile to the cheese curds.”

De Smet said consumption of raw milk has its share of health benefits.

Milk has been in the news lately because a strain of bird flu has circulated among cows in Kansas, Texas and New Mexico. De Smet said she is not concerned about that affecting her herd because it is a closed herd. The herd started with one bull and 16 cows 10 years ago and no new cows have been introduced.

Keeping the herd tight-knit and happy leads to healthy and tasty products.

“We are a sustainable farm,” she said. “Which means that everything that the cows eat comes from our farm… Our milk is chock-full of beneficial bacteria and probiotics.”