Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
Plant Milk Is Better For Us and the Climate. So Why Do We Subsidize Dairy?
Cow juice is still cheaper—and your taxes keep it that way.
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.
The dairy lobby in the US is huge money. If you ever want to know why we're making a seemingly stupid decision follow the money, look at the entrenched interests and read some history. We subsidize dairy farmers because we used to subsidize dairy farmers and they spent a bunch of their earnings lobbying for more subsidies.
56Probably because everyone tried only the shittiest alt-malks, assume they are all bad, and somehow don't get heartburn and diarrhea and gunky mouth and throat feel from cow milk. I save all my lactose intolerance suffering for cheese and ice cream.
Seriously though it's the same as people that say only bad things about tofu but have only eaten white American 'recipes' that genuinely suck. Meanwhile Asians happily inhaling literal tons of it prepared in actually good meals. Try making bread from scratch without salt (or salty ingredients) and that's what tofu foods for the white market remind me of.
33My personal theory is that we subsidize dairy not for the milk, but for the cheese. As far as I'm aware you can't make cheese out of plant milks, and we've gotten pretty reliant on cheese as a source of protein and other nutrients in our American diets - especially among children and lower income diets.
32I had this fantastic plant-based milk product on my store shelves called "Not Milk". I really enjoyed it. Had this mild coconut flavor which might turn off some (not me) but anyway, it's gone now because it was too expensive for the market I'm in.
Meanwhile gallons of milk flow for the same purpose, only subsidized for under half the cost per ounce.
As we do, we stifle innovation ourselves based on our past.
26Because lots of people in your country drink it, like it, and even more eat things made from it. Like cheese.
"Two thirds of people can't tolerate lactose" is utterly fucking meaningless in this context. Most of those are in Asia. Last I checked, it was countries giving out subsidies, not some nebulous world council.
And nearly all farming gets subsidised, because that reduces reliance on external countries. You've seen what capitalism did to housing. You don't want that to happen to food.
24Are there actual studies showing that plant-based alternatives are better for health (for individuals that digest lactose just fine like me) ?
I switched to alt-milks for ecological reason but media keep talking about the negative health effects of «ultra-transformed food», which alt-milk very much sounds like...
20Can you make cheese out of almond milk? If I'm doing my math right, 75% of milk is made into cheese.
18I don't see why dairy should be subsidized but some plant milks aren't exactly environmentally friendly either. The best can be said is they're better than dairy, assuming the same land could be used for both. But they can be devastating in their own right. E.g. to grow 1 almond (i.e. one kernel) takes over 3 gallons of water. Other crops used to make milk like oats have lower water consumption.
16I see soy/oat/rice milk as their own thing, instead of a direct cow milk substitute/replacement.
There are many, many dairy product that are important as food or ingredients to other foods such as butter, yogurt, ice cream, cream, infant formula, and various cheeses that cannot be replaced directly by plant based alternatives.
And also, if you don't like milk, try getting one of those unhomoginized milk in glass bottles that's usually directly bottled by local farms. You have to shake a lot to get the cream on top dissolved again, but there is nothing that's quite like an ice cold cup of that.
15I prefer plant-based milk over dairy, it tastes better and it lasts longer. I tried plant based milk years ago and never went back. I've tried cashew, macadamia, rice, soy, almond, coconut, oat, and sunflower. Some of my favorites are vanilla almond, dark chocolate almond and cashew, vanilla macadamia, and vanilla coconut. My family still buys dairy milk, but we always bought plant-based butter. I buy cream cheese to use as bread spread.
14Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well, which makes the occasional latte an especially pricey proposition.
Bring that complain to the producers of "oat milk" and similar products. Producing a gallon of oat milk has ingredience costs of about 20ct. You know what you are paying for it in the supermarket. Go figure who gets rich on people who are looking for "alternatives".
13A lot of arguments see to be that it tastes better. I don’t want to argue subjective tastes. However, in terms of economics, the better taste would mean that there is no need to subsidize it. The market would bear the additional cost if the taste and utility of milk is there. The question posed is still relevant: why do we subsidize it? Everyone arguing how much better it is than the alternatives are just proving the point that we shouldn’t be subsidizing it.
12Like an estimated two-thirds of the world’s population, I don’t digest lactose well,
That number, like all world population numbers is heavily skewed by just how many people are in China. The mutation that causes adults to continue to produce the enzyme to digest lactose is less common among those of Asian descent.
(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.)
...and there are medieval European recipes that call for almond milk, and tofu is made from soy milk and there are written sources referencing it roughly a thousand years old. You're right, none of these are really new on the scene, aside from maybe oat milk.
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.
I feel like your first paragraph completely ignored this aspect. You squeeze milk out of a cow. Nut and bean milks require grinding the stuff up with a lot of water, mixing it thoroughly, then squeezing the wet pulp through a fine filter (for small batches something like a cheesecloth) to separate the milk from the pulp.
Commercial oat milk requires further processing, because just pulping, mixing with water and straining oats does not produce anything appetizing at all.
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.
That's not a bad assumption on their part - people who are deeply concerned with the emissions involved in producing their food tend to be richer, in no small part because poor folks are going to put price first, because they have to think about how food fits into their budget more.
Also cheese - you can't make cheese from plant milks. Well, you can try, but that's basically how you make tofu, and performing a similar process on other plant milks creates something closer to tofu than cheese.
9Milk, cream, cheese (most of what milk ends up as), and butter, are all delicious, despite the corrupting economic and political arrangements. Is the quantity consumed appropriate? The US diet is demanding.
The article sort of glosses over the input required to grow plant-based milk products effectively at scale, and the fact they don't constantly produce like cows, the ways the crops can be destroyed and what's required to protect them. A byproduct of dairy farming is manure, often used to fertilize vegetable crops, but the nitrogen fixation used in synthetic fertilizers requires a lot of energy input as well.
9We all just say "capitalism" and end the thread right?
5What's more local, whatever is more local is likely better for the planet unless that UK oat milk in that Toronto Coffee shop flew there on its own.
3As for the answer to the question....
1Because milking nuts is hard. Their teats are so small!
1I can't make milk kefir with almond milk
1Subsidies have devalued food and the value of farms and farm labor. If they went away, meat and dairy consumption would fall simply because we would have to pay the true dollar value of producing those foods.
I don't agree with the environmental assessment in this article though. The quantity produced might be the same, but a cup of cow milk has a lot more calories and micronutrients than plant milk. Sure, many people don't have the genetics to digest it, but there's a reason mammals drink milk until they can eat other foods. They wouldn't survive long sipping puddles of soy water.
0Sorry but plant milk is a processed food with no nutritional value. It is not better for us or the planet. This is just a silly article.
-3Cuz mhn milk gud
-3i switched to milk from local cows that are happy and grass fed... and damn does it taste better. like measurably better, in everything i use it for. grocery store milk now tastes strange to me. it's more expensive, but who really needs to use that much milk? i don't drink it casually, just in baking, etc.
non dairy milks are a scam to sell water to rich city people.
-3Cos fake milk tastes like shit
-4Good question. For some dumb reason, we keep telling kids to drink milk, too, as well as try to get them to drink it in schools, when we should be doing anything BUT that. We should be telling them to cut dairy to as close to zero as possible.
It's still part of the food pyramid is it not? WTAF.
-4I would actually agree with this plant milk thing if it wasn't even of a worse alternative to cow milk and with so much sugar and chemicals as a can of Pepsi:
-4i dont really like anything but whole cows milk. skim is just basically water and i would rather drink water than watery milk. but i havent had milk for a long time. i just eat cheese all the time. i will never give up cheese. yummy
-5How is it better for us? Most plant milks have no protein in them or a fraction of the protein of real milk. Not to mention plant milk often doesn’t taste great. Oat milk is the only one I find acceptable and even then I don’t prefer it to real milk.
Also, there are other dairy products like yogurt and cheese that you need real milk for.
-5Permanently Deleted
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