Re: butter. Butter is so cheap in the US because dairy farmers (over) produce milk, to the point major dairies have to diversify production to handle the surplus. (Butter, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, etc.) The US Government also provides subsidies to keep dairy farms afloat as they produce oceans of milk.
IIRC, Canada has a quota system, surplus milk is discouraged. The US has a major beef with Canada regarding restrictions on the import of milk products (the US would probably overwhelm the Canadian market).
Now I’m envious. I’m seeing that price point for 1/2 liter / 700ml bottles over here.
Butter is cheaper in the US due to huge government subsidies to support the dairy industry. Canada uses a supply management system to regulate price and production instead.
It’d be interesting to see the US price with the subsidies added in, as well as the waste from overproduction.
eta:
Are they willing for forgo their massive government subsidies to compete equally? Didn’t think so.
Canada does indeed have a supply management system for dairy. Keeps prices high for milk, butter, eggs, etc. I don’t buy butter often but I think it’s around $5-$7 a pound (yeah we have the metric system but just like a lot of other things we do it in kind of a half-assed fashion, especially where food is involved).
So stealing $1000 (Canadian, I assume, so about $700-$750 USD) of butter with a single shopping cart seems quite plausible to me.
Dairy isn’t really my area, but my understanding from our dairy expert is that the subsidy is more to buy the surplus milk to keep prices from crashing and putting the farms out of business, which would then cause prices to skyrocket. It is part of a series of price stabilization measures initially started by Nixon through the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970 (though the US Government has been involved in dairy pricing since the early/mid-20th century).
So… maybe? US dairy farmers would love to sell to Canada (and elsewhere) because they’d get a better price than the subsidy rate, but without the government buying up surplus milk, milk production would likely be even more dominated by large corporations as smaller farms go out of business and prices would then probably be significantly higher than they are now.
Unlike other economic issues, farm subsidies are about preventing civil unrest as well as being a food sovereignty issue. Food in the US is relatively cheap compared to much of the rest of the world, but the US experiences the same civil discontent when food prices rise considerably or fluctuate wildly, since food is the one thing everyone is compelled to buy. (Exemplified by the attacks on Biden then Harris about recent inflation).
The price of olive oil seems to be suffering from Brexit as well. Here in Germany a 750ml bottle of Bertolli runs about €8, which by the current exchange rate is about £7, or US$9, I guess?
Butter is about €2.50 to €3.00 for a 200g block, making it about €15/kg, if my math is right. I’m no good in math, that’s why I’m a frontend developer.
I measure my weight loss in pats of butter. It used to be lard but I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t just fat that I was losing but other things too. 4 pats to the kilo is a way to visualise the loss/gain in a way I seem to be unusualy motivated by.
