California's pricing system for milk gives cheese makers the lowest price for milk — a holdover from the Depression era, when making cheese was a way to use up surplus milk. But now cheese makers are dairies' biggest customers, and still get the low price.
Many dairy farmers culled their herds because of high feed prices caused by the drought, reducing the supply of milk. Price increases will flow through many food products beyond a carton of milk.
An alarming amount of the food we produce is never eaten. It’s a huge waste of land, water, labor, fuel and other resources. How to limit the losses? That depends on where we live.
Where food is cheap and plentiful, consumers are the biggest wasters — whether at home, in restaurants or at school. But how much of this waste is preventable?
As the costs of running a farm rise, farmers are getting paid less for their milk. That's forcing some farmers to get bigger or auction off their cows.
