Not long ago I wrote about the benefits of raw milk but bemoaned the high price. Now, however, as the average price for a gallon of milk is reported to be approaching $4, I'm wondering if we can afford to buy milk in this house at all!
Why is the cost of milk rising? As with most things there is probably a multiplicity of reasons. But a number of the sources I found attribute the price spike to the increasing demand for corn resulting from ethanol production. Rising demand for corn means higher corn prices. The majority of farmers feed their cows corn. When it costs more to feed their cows, farmers charge more for their milk.
Yet another reason to dislike the ethanol craze. Here are some more. And some more (see sidebar).
Hmmmm. The raw milk we buy comes from cows who eat grass, not corn. I'm going to hope our friendly raw milk provider doesn't see a need to raise his prices as well. And if the gap in price between raw and pasteurized milk continues to close, I will have yet another motivation to introduce more raw milk into our diet.
4 comments:
Silage and hay does have to be harvested; tractors run on petroleum products. The increase in fuel costs should be the only increase in cost for your raw milk producer. If Favorite Apron stops by, she may correct me... I imagine that foods "off the (corn) grid" (like raw milk and "real" eggs) will hold their prices better than commercially prepared foods that are interdependent on the corn economy. See, our society doesn't run only on oil - it also runs on corn. I suspect that alot of people are finding this out the hard way.
On the other hand, some food products are starting to use real sugar again instead of high fructose corn syrup. A small gain...
I thought of you when we went to buy our milk at Kwik trip the other day ($1.54/half gallon). Yikes! I remembered your post on raw milk and the cost. We're considering a cow or a goat. Wonder if the congregation would mind such animals in the parsonage/church lawn? :-)
My son went out with his girlfriend to pick up some milk the other night, while he's spending some days with her family. He drinks a lot of milk, and he offered to cover the cost. No, they wouldn't let him do that, but I was shocked at what it cost. They only drink organic milk (with a cute little cow jumping over the moon, or something like that). It was $6.49 a gallon. I expressed the hope that my son gets better mileage per gallon than our van!
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