Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition. So it was a pleasant surprise when, shortly after moving to San Francisco, I ordered a drink at Blue Bottle Coffee and didn’t have to ask—or pay extra—for a milk alternative. Since 2022, the once Oakland-based, now Nestlé-owned cafe chain has defaulted to oat milk, both to cut carbon emissions and because lots of its affluent-tending customers were already choosing it as their go-to.
Plant-based milks, a multibillion-dollar global market, aren’t just good for the lactose intolerant: They’re also better for the climate. Dairy cows belch a lot of methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide; they contribute at least 7 percent of US methane output, the equivalent emissions of 10 million cars. Cattle need a lot of room to graze, too: Plant-based milks use about a tenth as much land to produce the same quantity of milk. And it takes almost a thousand gallons of water to manufacture a gallon of dairy milk—four times the water cost of alt-milk from oats or soy.
But if climate concerns push us toward the alt-milk aisle, dairy still has price on its side. Even though plant-based milks are generally much less resource-intensive, they’re often more expensive. Walk into any Starbucks, and you’ll likely pay around 70 cents extra for nondairy options.
. Dairy’s affordability edge, explains María Mascaraque, an analyst at market research firm Euromonitor International, relies on the industry’s ability to produce “at larger volumes, which drives down the cost per carton.” American demand for milk alternatives, though expected to grow by 10 percent a year through 2030, can’t beat those economies of scale. (Globally, alt-milks aren’t new on the scene—coconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, which is thousands of years old.)
What else contributes to cow milk’s dominance? Dairy farmers are “political favorites,” says Daniel Sumner, a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist. In addition to support like the “Dairy Checkoff,” a joint government-industry program to promote milk products (including the “Got Milk?” campaign), they’ve long raked in direct subsidies currently worth around $1 billion a year.
Big Milk fights hard to maintain those benefits, spending more than $7 million a year on lobbying. That might help explain why the US Department of Agriculture has talked around the climate virtues of meat and dairy alternatives, refusing to factor sustainability into its dietary guidelines—and why it has featured content, such as a 2013 article by then–Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, trumpeting the dairy industry as “leading the way in sustainable innovation.”
But the USDA doesn’t directly support plant-based milk. It does subsidize some alt-milk ingredients—soybean producers, like dairy, net close to $1 billion a year on average, but that crop largely goes to feeding meat- and dairy-producing livestock and extracting oil. A 2021 report by industry analysts Mintec Limited and Frost Procurement Adventurer also notes that, while the inputs for dairy (such as cattle feed) for dairy are a little more expensive than typical plant-milk ingredients, plant alternatives face higher manufacturing costs. Alt-milk makers, Sumner says, may also have thinner profit margins: Their “strategy for growth is advertisement and promotion and publicity,” which isn’t cheap.
Starbucks, though, does benefit from economies of scale. In Europe, the company is slowly dropping premiums for alt-milks, a move it attributes to wanting to lower corporate emissions. “Market-level conditions allow us to move more quickly” than other companies, a spokesperson for the coffee giant told me, but didn’t say if or when the price drop would happen elsewhere.
In the United States, meanwhile, it’s a waiting game to see whether the government or corporations drive down alt-milk costs. Currently, Sumner says, plant-based milk producers operate under an assumption that “price isn’t the main thing” for their buyers—as long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But it’s going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.
Are you familiar with the term ‘tautology’?
Sometimes you have to tell children twice before they get it through their thick skulls.
Due to freedom of selection, nowhere in the world has a alt-milk market which surpasses that of traditional milk. It’s because people prefer traditional milk, and not plant-paste. I’m sorry that I’m having to repeat myself for you to understand, but hey - you can lead a horse to water, you can’t make it drink.
If plant/alt milk were more popular, you’d see places where it supplanted traditional milk, but you don’t see that literally anywhere in the world. So, it’s a hard truth. One that…due to people’s confirmation bias, they don’t seem to be willing to accept.
There is freedom of selection, but it’s not a free market. We’re literally discussing that in this post. Milk is substantially cheaper due to subsidies. Many people can’t afford to simply purchase the more expensive one when a cheaper version is available. However, in a free market, it wouldn’t be that much cheaper.
New products take time to surpass old products. You have false advertising and bad information floating around as truth and people think milk needs to be had to be healthy. It was so heavily advertised to boomers through millennials and even some of gen z, that I’m not surprised many have fallen for the marketing like you so heavily did.
Do you have me confused with someone who has wronged you?
My only response so far was a (admittedly cheeky) reply to your comment about how your reasoning for something being a ‘hard truth’ is simply because it’s the way is…a complete circle, your logic on that one.
You’re getting dragged by others because you opened with an objective claim that milk tastes better, which is a subjective opinion. You’re now pivoting to argue that cow milk is objectively better because it’s more popular? Taylor Swift isn’t the best musician because she’s popular. Because “best” is incredibly complex. Best guitarist? Composer? Singer? What’s best of any of those categories, anyway? We gotta ask Phaedrus, I suppose.
If you’re trying to argue that cow milk is the “best”: Cow milk is really good at getting protein and other minerals/vitamins to folks. Really good. It’s got a lot of properties that make it really useful in some recipes I love. Also I eat a lot of dairy ice cream, and yogurt. I’m not some anti-milk crusader.
Dairy production, however, is really energy- and space-intensive compared to some alternatives. There’s a tradeoff to be thought carefully about, and it deserves more than “cow milk is popular therefore it’s the best”. Unless you’re just trying to say that cow milk is popular because cow milk is popular (which no one was arguing?). If that’s the case, see my first reply. Circularity complete.
I’m not arguing cow milk is popular because cow milk is popular. I’m arguing that it’s popular because it is subjectively better than the alternatives.
Kind of like how dogs are 4 legged animals, but not all 4 legged animals are dogs. Your argument to that is claiming circular reasoning, but it’s clearly not.
Subsidies happen because they want to keep the prices low, because it’s a popular food item. The majority have chosen it, so that makes it the market leader. They didn’t choose it because it was a popular choice. And so inherently that makes it what it is. The defacto best option. Sometimes you have to paint with a broad brush when talking about broad topics.
Fact is, they lack a lot of the subjective properties that make milk as useful as it is. Milk is popular because it’s the best. It’s not the best because of its popularity. The popularity is simply an easy to understand byproduct of its superiority.
How about actually learning what circular reasoning is.
Cool, the nuance here I can get on board with. Thanks for expanding.