Can't cry over the spilt milk, if there is no milk !

The headlines today of kiwi's not affording milk, and purchasing soft drink instead for the kids to drink. Like any news paper article once you read he article it is not as drastic as first appears. Firstly that this is low income families, and secondly it is drinking the milk, not having the milk on breakfast, it is having milk drunk throughout the day.

A couple of points the farmers get paid approximately $5 a kg of milk solids.
Approximately milk as 10% solid content, so the farmers get paid about $0.50 per liter of milk. Thus there is a significant mark up to the supermarket which charges $2.00 a liter. I am surprised by the mark up between farmer and consumer. However as there is little competition, and no farmer has gone through expense of supplying direct to consumer it tells me that there are significant costs getting milk to consumers.

This raises the point of gates sales. It is illegal for farmers to sell unpasteurized milk unless it is at the farm gate, and is less than 5 liters. Fortunately there are rumblings that purchasing of unpasteurized milk is becoming more important to people.