AI Analysis: Production of butterfat

Executive Summary

Canada's butterfat production has grown substantially over four decades, with total shipments rising 60.2% from 269,338 to 431,422 thousand kg between 1983 and 2025, driven primarily by industrial and fluid purposes. The dataset spans 516 monthly observations across 11 regions and 4 distribution categories, revealing a strongly right-skewed distribution where national totals dwarf provincial figures. Industrial purposes dominates production volume and moves in near-perfect lockstep with total shipments (r=0.992), while 'Delivered as Cream' remains a minor and largely independent category.

Key Findings

• Total Canadian butterfat shipments grew 60.2% over the study period, reaching 431,422 thousand kg in 2025, up from 269,338 thousand kg in 1983.
• The dataset is strongly right-skewed, with a mean of 2,436 thousand kg versus a median of just 404 thousand kg, reflecting the outsized weight of national totals compared to provincial figures.
• 'Shipments, total' is the largest distribution category with an average of 4,727 thousand kg, while 'Delivered as cream' is the smallest at just 25.2 thousand kg mean — nearly 188 times smaller.
• Industrial purposes and total shipments are almost perfectly correlated (r=0.992), indicating that growth in industrial butterfat use is the primary driver of overall shipment volumes.
• 'Delivered as cream' behaves largely independently from other categories, showing weak correlations of only r=0.379 and r=0.329 with other distribution types.
• 29 outlier months were detected in Canada's total shipments using the IQR method, with the normal production range defined between approximately 16,649 and 34,064 thousand kg against a mean of 26,000 thousand kg.
• All four distribution categories exhibit right-skewed distributions, with 'Fluid purposes' showing a particularly stark gap between its mean of 1,722 thousand kg and its median of just 387 thousand kg.