Consumers Starting To See Dairy Prices Increase

Feb 08, 2022

Last fall, the Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC) recommended an increase of at least 8.4% on the price of milk paid to producers.

For butter, the increase will exceed 12%.

This is the largest increase announced by the CDC in more than 50 years, almost double the previous record.

Sylvain Charlebois is a Food Professor at Dalhousie University.

"We have started to see increases of anywhere between 5 to 15 per cent, depending on where you live. That's for fluid milk prices," he said. "We are expecting dairy products to follow suit in weeks to come. Bottom line is that the dairy section of the grocery store will become more expensive, unfortunately, for most Canadians."

Charlebois has concerns with how the process unfolded.

"The Canadian Dairy Commission every year will survey over 200 dairy farmers and will ask them about the cost to produce milk essentially and that's how they come up with the recommendation. To have access to that data has been impossible. We don't know how the sample design actually works. How it impacts the evaluation of costs. We don't know where these farms are coming from unfortunately. The transparency of the system itself is questionable at best."

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.