Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 11/8/21

While food prices are rising, average milk prices have basically stayed the same for U.S. consumers since January, our Meredith Lee reports.

Despite a CNN report that triggered alarm last week, the retail price of whole milk in the U.S. since the start of the year has increased just 3 cents, to $3.69 a gallon.

That means milk prices are up less than 1 percent, in contrast to around a 5 percent increase in the benchmark consumer price index over the same period.
Certainly, some cities have experienced isolated price swings in milk prices — though not as large as one family on CNN reported (up 80 cents in just a few weeks).

That’s because the U.S. in general has an oversupply of milk, and it’s gotten worse over the past few decades as smaller farms have shuttered and larger farms have bought up their livestock and increasingly dominated the industry.

It’s a problem that policymakers have been struggling to confront for years. And while the Biden administration has pledged to address antitrust issues in industries ranging from technology to meatpacking, the dairy sector hasn’t been a focus so far, in part because consumers aren’t seeing significantly higher prices as a result of consolidation.

“Milk isn’t the issue,” a senior White House official said. “You haven’t seen a huge spike in prices, but for some meat prices it’s gone up substantially. That’s because it’s more vulnerable to these kinds of spikes.”

For now, the White House is more intensely focused on the steep jump in the price of meat and poultry, which has left Democrats vulnerable to Republicans’ political attacks over inflation.