USNews.com:
By Meg Handley
Time to start really relishing those Oreos everyone, because soon milk could be a delicacy too expensive to pair with the bicolored cookie.
Milk prices are on track to jump as much as 15 percent in the beginning of 2013, an industry group said Wednesday, thanks in large part to the worst drought since 1956, which has sent animal feed prices soaring.
Searing temperatures and sparse rain in the nation's corn-producing regions have led to the biggest drop in corn output in 17 years, which has in turn put a premium on livestock feed, a big component of which, of course, is corn.
Americans spend almost 11 percent of their grocery budget on dairy products according to some estimates, and a big hike in milk prices could be big trouble when it comes to consumer budgets already strained by rising energy costs.
MORE
By Meg Handley
Time to start really relishing those Oreos everyone, because soon milk could be a delicacy too expensive to pair with the bicolored cookie.
Milk prices are on track to jump as much as 15 percent in the beginning of 2013, an industry group said Wednesday, thanks in large part to the worst drought since 1956, which has sent animal feed prices soaring.
Searing temperatures and sparse rain in the nation's corn-producing regions have led to the biggest drop in corn output in 17 years, which has in turn put a premium on livestock feed, a big component of which, of course, is corn.
Americans spend almost 11 percent of their grocery budget on dairy products according to some estimates, and a big hike in milk prices could be big trouble when it comes to consumer budgets already strained by rising energy costs.
MORE