Chad Bender writes:
On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 14:28:29 -0400, Fly-by-Night CC wrote:



I may be waaaay off base, but I also think some of the pricing
difference has to do with the economic base of the community - meaning,
"what the market will bear" with an additional thought to making a basic
staple of childhood nutrition available to segments that may not buy it
if it were more expensive.


That's probably true. But the $4.50/gal is not so far off for NY City as
well. I'm out in suburbia Long Island, so you could argue that my area is
more affluent than a lot of NY City and can bear the $4.50/gal. But there
are lots of low income families with children in Queens, Brooklyn, the
Bronx, etc, and the high milk prices are a burden on them.

I tend to think that right now a lot of the price is because of the dairy
farms. The price here and in the city has gone up by more than $1/gal
over the past year, and that's pretty hard to attribute to the
distributor.

http://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/MD_DA210.txt

I don't think milk prices at the producer have increased
substantially over the past few years. From the link above,
western NY prices are lower than the northeast average.

scott


Chad