Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Milk prices could rise by nearly 10 percent


A Holstein licks her lips as she eats during milking at a Holstein farm in Falling Spring, Pa. Dairy economists predict the retail price of milk could rise as much as 30 cents per gallon. 
 (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press The Spokesman-Review

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Celesta Powell buys four gallons of milk every week for her four children, and even with milk prices expected to rise, she says she has no plans to cut back.

“You can’t look at cutting your kids back on milk,” she said after loading several bottles of milk from Meyer Dairy store into her minivan recently. “What are you going to give them, soda?”

Dairy economists predict the retail price of milk could rise as much as 30 cents per gallon — a 9 percent jump — by fall. The reasons include rising fuel and feed costs for farmers and increasing demand for milk products around the globe.

The average retail price of whole milk could rise to $3.35 per gallon by October, up from $3.07 in January, said Ken Bailey, an agricultural economist at Penn State University who specializes in the dairy industry.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast also predicts an increase in the price that processors pay to farmers for raw milk. That is typically an indicator that the retail price of milk also will rise.

Logan Bower, president of the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania, said costs for farmers have risen so much recently that he is unsure whether even the predicted price increases will help.

Costs have surged for fuel and petroleum-based products and for the corn used to feed dairy cows, a side effect of increases in the production of ethanol.

Bower said he now pays about $180 a ton to feed his 500 dairy cows, up from $115 a ton a year ago, an increase of more than 50 percent.