From the 13 October edition:
Not milking it
Graeme Bluett’s letter (October 8), “Not Adding Up”, regarding the prices of milk and colby cheese, got me thinking about comparisons.
A flat white coffee I recently purchased used 350 ml of milk. Price of coffee – $4.30. Cost of milk content – 67c. Balance of cost of coffee – $3.63.
Quite obviously, the farmers growing the coffee beans overseas are ripping the job off as well, or are there other people in the gap between the producer-processor and the consumer?
The average consumption of milk in New Zealand is 90 litres per person per year, or $180 per person – the equivalent of 42 coffees, less than one a week.
Are priorities a factor?
I am not a dairy farmer, but let’s get off the backs of a sector in our nation which earns a very large portion of our export income, because all the overseas debt we have cannot be repaid by the internal income “merry-go-round” called GDP!
GRAHAM SMITH
Te KauwhataThis wins not just for the heroic amount of milk but also for the matching amount of non sequiturs.
4 comments:
"The average consumption of milk in New Zealand is 90 litres per person per year,"
Who's drinking the 80 litres a year I don't?
Not me, not my wife, not my children, not my mother, not anyone I know. Golly there must be some gross guzzlers out there.
Phuque o dear- I drink about 20 litres of milk a year(some in my coffee, muesli, flavouring in this & that - however, I am not including the amount that goes into cheeses (which I love) & butter (I do not consume margarine in any form) so- I assume the figure is derived from a stab in the data as to how much an adult *might* consume from every source?
BUT - the amount of nitrates, cowshit, damage to water margins, and general contribution to ozone damage from cattle makes me quite certain I'd happily give up - today- any consumption of any
bloody dairy produce.
It's gone beyond reasonable.
I have a feeling that a version of this letter might well make it into my next critical thinking course.
(I say "a version" because you're not normally allowed to quote, verbatim, letters to the editor in course materials.)
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