For those that wondered why milk has gone up in price....

[kalian]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4908010/

Believe it or not, the US only has 9 MILLION cows... This is
incredible....only 9 million cows in the entire nation. :eyes:

[Kellanved]

1. indeed

AFAIK the (unenlarged) EU has about 25 Million Milk Cows - probably Germany and France have almost 9 Million cows each.

[Cush]

2. Mooooooooooooooooooooo

:)

[Wickerman]

3. milking is pretty much an impossible way of life for the modern farmer

hardly anyone here in Southern Minnesota does it anymore. Low milk prices (govt. set) have made it really tough. As an economy of scale you need to run around 150 cows to stay profitable, but to milk them twice a day, 300 milkings, is more than 2 folks (say father and child, two sisters, what have you) can handle. When you hire on outside help, your profits plummet. On bad year (diseases, life-ending storms, a bad batch of milk) and you are out of business.

You see more and more corporate outfits, and they ain't too good to the animals as a general rule.

[Deja Q]

4. When fewer cows do more work...

that will eventually lead to more cows being able to do no work.

Just like people.

Once again, corporate america is milking resources (no pun intended) as quickly and as harshly as possible.

The prices we're paying now will be NOTHING in a few years, I suspect...

Big businesses get bigger and the smaller ones get smaller. Smaller farms get lesser profits because the corporate ROBBER BARONS have all the control, and thus all the MONEY. Yet these bullshit media organizations merely whine "they are not getting as much money". That's spin.

We keep hearing how DECREASED SUPPLY is to blame.

Well, much as 9/11 is now the cause for everything from terrorists to crack users to homosexuals to women who need an abortion otherwise they will die, the new catchphrase phenomenon is "Low supply increases prices, yee-hah!" to cover the cost of everything that skyrockets.

It's a kettle of cattle cack. And even the kettle to contain the cack is costing more.

Worse, everything that uses milk is going to go up. Butter, butter-wannabes, margarine, cheese, boxed macaroni that claims to use real cheese (dehydrated fluff, just add milk - but if it was originally cheese, that means it had milk and the milk was removed... so, yes, that orange crap is going to go up as well.)

And if the cost of plastic cheeze in a can doesn't go up, then we know it truly isn't dairy. :evilgrin:

But I'll end on a serious note, as taken from the article:


"My grandfather got $10.18 in 1978. If you factor in inflation, I'm either smart enough or stupid enough to stay in the dairy business with the same real dollars my grandfather did." Gee, I thought inflation was at a low right now... :eyes:

[DrWeird]

5. I hear that low carb milk is delicious.

I don't usually go for fad diets, tried low carb tortillas once and they were horrible, but the milk is apparently good.

Anybody like it?

[camero]

7. yeah I do

It's alot more expenisve though so I don't buy it often and I use it to make sugar free pudding. It's $4 for a half gallon here in FL.

[happyending]

6. dairy farming

really and truly sucks.

It's not a job most folks would want.

[chaska]

8. Only 9 million FOUR-legged cows. A lot more of the two-legged variety.

[kalian]

9. I thought those were SHEEPLE....

:evilgrin: