Milk Holds Strong Against Plant-Based Beverages in the Market

Aug 01, 2023

The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) reports that milk is not only winning in terms of nutrition, price, overall sales, and consumption volume in the beverage market, but it's also gaining market share over plant-based beverages.

Milk's dominant position, its consumption has decreased this year, as it has in previous years due to various beverage options flooding the market. Even though plant-based alternatives are falling in popularity even faster, milk's lead is extending.

According to research firm Circana Group, fluid milk retail sales volume until July 9, 2023, was 1.62 billion gallons, down 3.4% from the previous year. Comparatively, plant-based alternatives sold 182 million gallons year-to-date, down 6.6% from one year ago.

Almond drink remains the leader in the plant-based category but is down 9.4% this year. Oat beverages are up slightly by 1.8%, while soy-based beverages have decreased by 7.4%.

Although plant-based beverage sales are up 5.8% year-to-date based on sales values, the increase is primarily due to their higher prices compared to milk's 2.2% cost increase.

The statistics indicate that plant-based beverage consumption is declining, despite claims to the contrary. Milk continues to maintain its strong position in the market.

Video: Cleaning Sheep Barns & Setting Up Chutes

Indoor sheep farming in winter at pre-lambing time requires that, at Ewetopia Farms, we need to clean out the barns and manure in order to keep the sheep pens clean, dry and fresh for the pregnant ewes to stay healthy while indoors in confinement. In today’s vlog, we put fresh bedding into all of the barns and we remove manure from the first groups of ewes due to lamb so that they are all ready for lambs being born in the next few days. Also, in preparation for lambing, we moved one of the sorting chutes to the Coveralls with the replacement ewe lambs. This allows us to do sorting and vaccines more easily with them while the barnyard is snow covered and hard to move sheep safely around in. Additionally, it frees up space for the second groups of pregnant ewes where the chute was initially.