If you're already looking forward to baking for the holidays, there's one kitchen commodity you may want to start stockpiling now. Butter is increasingly in short supply, which means the price of it has skyrocketed—last month, it reached an average price of $4.70 per pound, a dollar-plus jump from January, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And though you could put it on your wish list for Santa, don't expect a reprieve anytime soon, according to one supply-chain management professor at Iowa State University. "Prices are not going to come down," Scott Grawe tells CNBC.
According to US Department of Agriculture stats, the amount of butter in cold storage as of September was down more than a fifth from the previous year, with a 10% drop from July to August alone, reports Food Dive. It's a domino effect that can first be tied back to a dip in milk production, which in January was down 1.4% from the same time in 2021—which in turn can be linked to farmers not being able to buy and maintain as many cows as they used to, thanks to high feed costs and a labor shortage. The USDA notes there were about 11,000 fewer cows on dairy farms in August compared to a year earlier.
Mother Nature hasn't helped things. "Environmental conditions such as extreme temperatures, floods, droughts, and frequent and intense storms also weighed on productivity growth," a USDA report from March notes. To handle this new butter-sparse world, CNBC advises consumers to shop around, as the price differential per pound can be up to $1, depending on where you pick up your groceries (hint: head to Trader Joe's). Meanwhile, Mary Elizabeth Williams has another remedy for the butter conundrum: Make your own, she writes at Salon, noting it's "absurdly easy" to do. (More butter stories.)
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