I’m in NE KS and about three years ago I started going to a Baker’s grocery store in Omaha with a buddy of mine that drives there every weekend for work. The original enticement was cheap booze, but milk is also cheap. In the last three years the range has been $1.69 to $1.99/gallon. It’s pushing $5.00 at my local store and my mom told me that’s what it is in NE MO. This is the only thing I can find and it’s BS.
https://www.zippia.com/advice/gallon-of-milk-costs-each-state/
In my hometown, the supermarket chains have cut milk prices down to match WalMart/Costco/Aldi/etc. In other parts of the state, prices are different. Maybe they’re doing that in Omaha.
I pay a bit over $3 in NE Wyoming; is there maybe better supply around Omaha (a major livestock area)?
It’s where the cows are?
There are cows everywhere.
Perhaps there are minimum milk prices at the state level?
Omaha is (perhaps more accurately was) a major meat packing plant center-beef and pork mainly. Different end product than dairy cows.
I live here and I am not aware of a surfeit of dairy operations. I think it’s much more likely related to the brisk competition between major grocery store chains, with several recent new competitors who are angling for market share with loss leaders like milk.
My smart ass answer? Somehow our Gov. Pete Ricketts, or his family, make money off of milk prices or the manipulation thereof.
Smartass Joke: Those aren’t cows, they’re Bulls!
Rebuttal to the Smartass Joke: Bull semen is probably worth a load (hee hee) more than milk, so the joke doesn’t really work for those in the know
This is why I’m no fun at parties. Well, that I and I never get invited.
Next Saturday, 7pm. Bring pizza and milk. No semen.
Not sure if I can comply with that last stipulation.
Bull.
I’ll try. But if you see me in the bushes at 6:55 with a pizza box balanced on my head and a jug of milk in my left hand, please don’t call the cops on me!
That depends on what your right hand is doing.
Besides, in my neighborhood the cops probably wouldn’t show up.
Complying with the invite?
This seems to be the most likely explanation to me, as well.
As you note, Nebraska isn’t a big state for milk production (it ranks at #25, and produces less than 1% of the U.S.'s milk supply). Beef and milk come from the same species, but different varieties are raised depending on the intended primary output.
As you also note, grocery stores have traditionally used several staples (most notably milk, meat/poultry, cereal, and soft drinks) as “loss leaders” – categories that they are willing to make little (or even no) money at, as they are products which most households buy regularly, and are often willing to switch stores for a better price on them. In other words, they’re pricing milk low, to get people to buy their groceries there (including, they hope, other groceries on which they’ll make more money). This’ll be particularly the case in a market where there’s a lot of competition for grocery shopping.
It must be the competition. We frequent two different Baker’s within 3 miles of each other and searching google maps for grocery stores in Omaha turns up 60 (10 of which are Bakers). Kroger owns Baker’s.