A dairy economist says he is watching how a big rise in retail dairy prices affects what people buy.
The National Milk Producers Federation is where Peter Vitaliano works.
“Dairy product consumption isn’t too affected by price changes,” he says, “but the retail price inflation we’re seeing now will test that.”
He tells Brownfield that inflation in the retail dairy market has been slower than in the rest of the economy, only going up by about 3% in January compared to 2021.
“But it’s gone up quickly, and in August it was 16.2%,” he says. “That’s a big deal, because the growth from one year to the next shows double-digit inflation.”
Vitaliano says that the price of milk has always gone up more slowly than the price of food and drinks as a whole. More work with cheese. This year, a change in retail prices was also caused by a rise in export demand and a shortage of milk.
“Most of the available milk has been used to make cheese. As a result, both the wholesale and retail prices of cheese haven’t gone up as much, while butter production has been kind of shorted,” he says.
In August, prices of food and drinks went up by almost 11%.
