The cow is a central animal in the traditional Galician country areas and for the identity of a region in which the rural areas are still relevant.

According to data from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment, from January 2010 to December 2010 Galicians consumed 259,8 millions of kg of liquid milk. The official population as of January 1, 2010 was 2.797.653, so the average consumption was 92,6 kg of liquid milk by habitant and year.

The Galician Statitics Institute registrered 963.368 bovine cattle units, of which 326.596 were milk cows; their production that year was 32,64 million liters, so the yearly average was 99 liters by cow.

Milk’s density is 1,032 kg/litre

• Each Galician would need nearly an entire cow for his yearly use (not taking into account cheese and other derivatives of milk).
• The region imports milk, despite its traditional image of milk production hub.

It is impossible to draw precisely a foodshed as there are no  precise data on consumption traceability, but the liquid milk foodshed for the Coruña- Ferrol metropolitan area (close to half a million people) would have been the entire Galician region and a sizeable part of the Asturias region, that produced a similar amount of milk on that year.