Like an estimated two-thirds of the worldā€™s population, I donā€™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 didnā€™t have to askā€”or pay extraā€”for a milk alternative. Since 2022, the once Oakland-based, now NestlĆ©-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, arenā€™t just good for the lactose intolerant: Theyā€™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 milkā€”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, theyā€™re often more expensive. Walk into any Starbucks, and youā€™ll likely pay around 70 cents extra for nondairy options.

. Dairyā€™s affordability edge, explains MarĆ­a Mascaraque, an analyst at market research firm Euromonitor International, relies on the industryā€™s ability to produce ā€œat larger volumes, which drives down the cost per carton.ā€ American demand for milk alternatives, though expected to grow by 10 percent a year through 2030, canā€™t beat those economies of scale. (Globally, alt-milks arenā€™t new on the sceneā€”coconut milk is even mentioned in the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, which is thousands of years old.)

What else contributes to cow milkā€™s dominance? Dairy farmers are ā€œpolitical favorites,ā€ says Daniel Sumner, a University of California, Davis, agricultural economist. In addition to support like the ā€œDairy Checkoff,ā€ a joint government-industry program to promote milk products (including the ā€œGot Milk?ā€ campaign), theyā€™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 guidelinesā€”and why it has featured content, such as a 2013 article by thenā€“Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, trumpeting the dairy industry as ā€œleading the way in sustainable innovation.ā€

But the USDA doesnā€™t directly support plant-based milk. It does subsidize some alt-milk ingredientsā€”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 ā€œstrategy for growth is advertisement and promotion and publicity,ā€ which isnā€™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. ā€œMarket-level conditions allow us to move more quicklyā€ than other companies, a spokesperson for the coffee giant told me, but didnā€™t say if or when the price drop would happen elsewhere.

In the United States, meanwhile, itā€™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 ā€œprice isnā€™t the main thingā€ for their buyersā€”as long as enough privileged consumers will pay up, alt-milk can fill a premium niche. But itā€™s going to take a bigger market than that to make real progress in curbing emissions from food.

  • TinyPizza@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    check out your local Aldi. Theyā€™ve got a range of almond, soy, coconut and oat milk at very reasonable prices. I was loving coconut milk until my friend told me how high in saturated fat it is (like really high.) Since then I do about half coconut and half light almond for my oatmeal and I canā€™t say enough how good it tastes. Iā€™m eating oatmeal as a dessert now sometimes because I like it so much.

    Edit: had originally said cholesterol but totally had meant saturated fat. Thanks to @DarthFrodo for bringing the error to my attention.

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Depends on where they are grown.

        California is a huge Almond supplier, but they have had frequent droughts. People get angry when they are asked to conserve water and then everything theyā€™ve conserved is used to grow a water-hungry crop.

        This could be solved by growing them somewhere else, or desalinating (California is a coastal state after all).

    • DarthFrodo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Plants donā€™t produce cholesterol, only animals. Coconut oil is high in saturated fat that seems to be bad for blood cholesterol levels, but coconut milk (for drinking, in cartons) has hardly any fat in it. The one I looked up has half of the saturated fat compared to 3,5% fat cows milk.

      • TinyPizza@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for the correction, I totally meant saturated fat but my brain shit the bed. Iā€™ll correct my post and note the edit. Thanks again!