Dairy Farmers Of Manitoba Chair Says Consumers Won't Necessarily Pay More At The Store

The Canadian Dairy Commission (CDC) recently announced an increase in the price of farm gate milk for early next year.

David Wiens is chair of Dairy Farmers of Manitoba.

He says there's been a rise in production costs since the start of the pandemic.

"When we look at the feed alone, the increased feed cost, it's gone up by 27 per cent over the last two years. The price of fuel has gone up by 30 per cent. Seeds have gone up by 20 per cent. That is really beginning to take a bite out of dairy farm costs and of course with the production cost going up so significantly in this period of time, the pricing has not kept up."

Wiens says this has created a lot of stress on the farm in terms of trying to meet the rising costs with the revenue received.

He notes there isn't a direct correlation between changes to farm gate milk prices and what consumers pay in the store.

However, Wiens gave some examples if the price increase was passed on directly to consumers.

"In a restaurant, the glass of milk through this increase would go up by one cent for a glass of milk. For a medium pizza, at a restaurant, it would increase the cost of the pizza by four cents. If you want to take that to a grocery store, for example, a 650 gram tub of yogurt would increase by about 3.7 per cent, which would be 12 cents for that tub. Another way of looking at it is, for a 450 gram package of cheddar cheese, that cost would go up by 3.6 per cent, which would be an additional 26 cents for that package of cheese."

Wiens says the price increase by the CDC is helping to put dairy farmers on even keel.