Well, Wisconsin is #1 in cheese production and was #1 in milk production until the 1990s, still #2. If you take milk and cheese together, I think the historical nickname "America's Dairyland" continues to be applicable, especially considering the importance of dairy to Wisconsin's economy compared to California.
OT for this interesting discussion about Epic but one of the reasons that Wisconsin slipped to #2 in milk production back in the 90's was that northern tier milk producing states instituted stronger environmental protections back in the 1980's forcing changes in how animal waste in huge dairy operations had to be managed. At the time there was a lot of pollution due to runoff of waste into creeks and rivers causing a cascade of problems with water quality downstream of these huge dairy operations.
A large number of these operations, instead of complying with the new environmental rules that would force better waste containment simply looked around the country for areas that had less strict requirements, lower enforcement, and an established dairy industry. Many of them ended up moving to counties in north central Texas and buying up large tracts of cheap land. They shipped their herds south and went on about their business down here just as they had up there. Erath County became one of the state's largest milk producing counties as a result of this migration.
Texas has been a cattle state for generations but most of the larger operations were traditional ranches of 10's of thousands of acres with lots of open land where cattle herds were measured based on # acres/cow metrics. Feedlots where cattle were fattened just before slaughter were the only places where you had large herds crammed into a small area. The dairy industry bought much smaller properties, up to several thousands of acres, and their dairy herds were crammed into these smaller spaces with the wastes being largely allowed to run off into creeks and rivers. It took years before Texas stepped in to try to get a handle on the agri-waste runoff pollution of their rivers and many large rivers in the state still have contamination issues.
Not coincidentally, this same issue affected swine operations in the US causing concentration of pig farms in North Carolina due to lax regulations.
