The future of animal care and technology in the dairy industry is tightly connected to larger geopolitical and social trends. As countries develop and incomes rise, consumption of high quality dairy products and by-products also increases. While rapid growth of dairy farming is occurring in several highly populated emerging regions, it is unlikely that these regions will be able to meet increased domestic demand. Thus, export driven growth will likely continue in countries that already have well-developed dairy industries. Growth and globalization will greatly influence management practices on dairy farms. The ability to participate in export markets is based on production of high quality milk and milk by-products that meet rigorous quality standards that sometimes serve as non-tariff trade barriers. Global quality standards will continue to get more rigorous and more uniform and will likely be market driven and enforced primarily by milk purchasers. New technologies for testing (both on-farm and at the processing plant) for an increasing number of potential residues (chemical metabolites, antibiotics, microbes etc.) will be developed and deployed. Management practices on farms will need to change to ensure continued market access. Historically, dairy farm workers have been drawn from rural inhabitants but are increasingly immigrants from less developed regions. Recent geopolitical trends are uncertain but seem to be reducing opportunities for immigrants to freely move to regions that need dairy farm workers. These trends indicate that farm workers will likely be less experienced and less available, thus driving increased adoption of automation in every aspect of animal care and milk harvesting. Increased automation requires more technically skilled managers and also access to highly skilled support people. Social pressure to reduce antimicrobial usage in agriculture will continue to increase. Use of antimicrobials and hormones will be increasingly restricted and testing methods for these compounds will be increasingly sensitive. These changes will drive tremendous changes in husbandry and management practices and require innovation to continue to reduce infectious disease in all age groups of dairy cattle.