PHOTOS: What's driving a business shift for NC's largest milk producer — Iredell County

IREDELL COUNTY, N.C. — Every year, New Sterling ARP Church conducts footraces during harvest time with a name that tells much about how this Iredell County community is committed to dairy farms.

The event, called Running with the Cows, is a play on the Running of the Bulls summer festival in Pamplona, Spain. These races are run among the dairy farms that dot western Iredell, often with the Holstein cattle and a few Jersey cows watching from the fields.

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This is milk country, here among the gentling rolling hills at the base of the Brushy Mountains. The dairy farms in Iredell produce more of North Carolina’s milk than any other county in the state, in terms of dollar value, says Emily Hughes, spokeswoman for the N.C. Department of Agriculture.

But the milk business in Iredell is changing, says Jeff McNeely, CEO of G&M Milling, a Statesville mill that grinds and packages livestock feed for dairy cows and other animals.

See photos and read more here.

Cox Media Group