Crying over spilled skim… America is frothy with excess milk after dairy production hit a record high in May. Demand isn’t keeping up with cows’ output, and cheese factories hamstrung by labor shortages can’t curdle it fast enough. The last time farmers were drowning in dairy was when Covid closed restaurants and schools. Faced with spoiling supplies, farmers have reportedly been dumping dairy into sewers and pouring it on their fields.
Udders in overdrive: Dairy cows don’t have an “off” switch, so the only way to limit milk output is by sending them to slaughter.
Dairy discount: Milk prices have dropped as producers try to encourage bulk buyers to purchase their glut, and June’s consumer inflation #s show price drops have trickled down to shoppers.
Perishable probs… Milk has a short lifespan, and suppliers can’t even offload it to schools in cartons (ICYMI: it’s summer break). The USDA has historically stepped in to buy (longer-lasting) cheese to stabilize milk prices, and recently started step one of bidding to buy 47M pounds, which could bring dairy prices back up. But the issue might be deeper: while dairy-cow numbers grew 13K from last year (as of May), milk consumption has trended down as plant-based options sip away at Big Dairy’s 86% market share.
Discounts alone don’t revive thirst… Falling milk prices aren’t enough to persuade Gen Z to opt for 2% over macadamia #mylk. So the dairy industry is leaning on marketing. Recently it ran a splashy ad featuring Aubrey Plaza. A few years ago it launched an #UndeniablyDairy campaign (the hashtag has 216M views on TikTok), and had MrBeast tour a virtual dairy farm in “Minecraft.” The ’90s “Got Milk” campaign famously stalled dairy’s decline, and Hailey Bieber recently wore a “Got Milk” shirt on Insta, jus’ sayin’.