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.

  • abraxas
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    1 year ago

    Full disclosure, the site you linked offers a non-accredited certificate in vegan nutrition. The “expert” they cite in the crazier claims in your links is the founder and president of the group, and those claims are generally either rejected, or merely “not accepted due to lack of evidence” by the scientific community.

    Honestly, to a neutral observer, if you took the vegan propaganda off the site and stripped it to text files, both of them still read like bogey-man anti-meat articles. Between the un-cited claims that contradict the studies I find in a google search and the broad-stroke accusations, I wouldn’t be able to take it seriously in a vacuum.

    I’d go into details, but if you read the articles it will be obvious to you. If it’s not, hit me up and I’ll point out just a few of the parts of those two gossip-mag articles are the worst offenders to scientific thinking.

    One true statement comes out of it. Drinking cow milk does not seem to be a contributor for weight gain OR loss in a vacuum.

    • QuaffPotions@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That “non-accredited” education program is eligible for a variety of continuing education credits.

      That orgs assertion that dairy doesn’t cause cancer is suspicious at best when there is evidence of cancer risk, multiple cancers, and when that same organization appears to be largely an industry frontend.

      Lastly I trust wfpb dietary patterns because they work so well, any person can find out for them self. Join any active wfpb community and you see people routinely shedding lbs, lowering their blood cholesterol levels to miraculous lows, managing their autoimmune symptoms or even in some cases to the point of remission, and overall feeling better and having more energy than they have in their entire lives.

      People who follow more animal-centric diets on the other hand, routinely die faster and more miserably.

      • abraxas
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        1 year ago

        That “non-accredited” education program is eligible for a variety of continuing education credits.

        So? I deal with con-ed regularly at a professional level. That’s NOT a big win. You can get con-ed in some healthcare fields going to vegas and sitting through a speech about how to raise wages in the field.

        That orgs assertion that dairy doesn’t cause cancer is suspicious at best when there is evidence of cancer risk, multiple cancers, and when that same organization appears to be largely an industry frontend.

        First, “evidence of cancer risk” is why you can’t buy a cup of coffee in California without a cancer warning. That is a very specific term that means “we have not shown that it causes cancer”. One of your links is a statistical analysis that admits only to controlling for soy, in over 52,000 people. The other took a bunch of pubmed studies and found very slight correlation with prostate cancer risk, with a “may increase” conclusion.

        None of your links are “causes cancer” or even “likely to cause cancer”. They’re about as strong as the “soy causes cancer” or “artificial sweeteners cause cancer” or (yes) “coffee causes cancer”.

        Second… I have NEVER heard anyone call Cancer Research UK a shill charity. They are quite literally a cancer research charity that is, yes, backed by companies that treat cancer and save lives. I mean, how exactly are you disputing them over that?

        People who follow more animal-centric diets on the other hand, routinely die faster and more miserably.

        Ahhh yes. “Plant Chompers”, a propaganda vid. You just HAD to change this from a dairy vs plant milk health discussion and go full Vegan Or Die. Here’s my equally controversial anti-vegan answers:

        Eating less Meat won’t save the Planet. Here’s Why

        Vegan diets don’t work. Here’s why

        You won’t agree. I don’t care. You just linked me to “Plant Chompers” as part of your argument.