On Fri, 09 Nov 2018 21:55:40 -0500, wrote:

On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 13:32:22 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 10 Nov 2018 10:20:18 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



"Julie Bove" wrote in message
news
"Logan MacEwens" wrote in message
news I shop every week where I sometimes run out of cream near the end of the
week.
So I figured I'd stock evaporated and condensed milk, but they change
the
taste of the coffee and, 90% of the can gets wasted because I only need
one shot or two until I go out and buy cream again (which can't be
stocked).

Then I had the bright idea of stocking powdered milk!

Sure, it sucks as a product, but for emergencies it should work, right?
Guess what?

The PRICE of powdered milk is far more than fresh milk!
Why?

Generally crap costs less than the real thing, right?
So why is powdered milk (admittedly, it's crap), more EXPENSIVE than
fresh milk?

I don't get it.
Do you?

Think about it. How long would they have to dehydrate it for to get it
to
powder? I have no idea but that would use electricity. Dried foods are
always more expensive than fresh.

But powdered milk used to be cheaper than fresh milk, presumably
because they didn't have to move it in refrigerated trucks etc once
made, so the question is why has the price ratio changed now ?

Regular milk got cheaper.

I don't believe that.

Refrigeration is the standard now not the exception.

Still costs significantly more to cart the milk from where
its produced to where it is consumed in refrigerated trucks.
And here, it is carted much further too. There are damned
few local dairys left anymore, its carted for hundreds of
miles now and didn't used to be.

I just looked and they say a gallon of milk was $1.15 in 1970
http://www.1970sflashback.com/1970/Economy.asp

and if you use this inflation calculator that would be $7.43 right
now.
https://tinyurl.com/y8h5yc2e

It was $2.42 today at the store.
Sounds cheaper to me.
the price of milk in the USA is among the lowest in the world for
several reasons
The productivity of dairies is almost double what it was in 1950 on a
per cow basis. The average herd size is at least 10 times what it was
in 1950.
On an adjusted price basis the cost of cattle feed has also decreased
for the same kinds of reasons.

This puts the cost of pruduction per unit much lower in adjusted
dollar values.

The USA sells fluid milk at retail for well below the total cost of
production and is overproducing by a huge percentage, and the
overproduction is incrreasing at the same time that consumption is
dropping.

The adjusted dollar cost of transportation and refrigeration has also
dropped significantly - making fresh fluid milk more competetive
against the highly processed milk powder.

The cost of processing has not dropped nearly as fast as the cost of
production and the processing is not subsidized like the milk
production sector. Also the value of powdered milk is more
permanent" than fluid milk. What is not sold within a week or so of
production is still saleable at the same price, a year later anywhere
in the world. It is a semi-durable commodity traded on the world
market