If you read the news a lot, you might think that dairy products are dying as consumers turn to plant-based beverages that call themselves “milk.”
The narrative for several years, according to Alan Bjerga, Senior Vice President of the National Dairy Farmers Federation, has been that sales of plant-based beverages are up and milk consumption is down, but that is in changing.
“Vegetable drinks are on the decline, in terms of consumption. Their volumes are down from a year ago. This has been the case since at least February. It’s not a flash in the pan.
Which, according to Bjerga, had to happen.
“People don’t drink these drinks anymore like they used to and when they drink more than one drink, say oats for example, it comes at the expense of another type of herbal drink. They are cannibalizing their own audience now.Those are all indications of a maturing market and that image of the scrappy upstart just doesn’t hold up anymore.
Like other new products, Bjerga says they grow until the novelty wears off.
“We’re starting to see that in herbal products. This is to be expected. This should also have been expected from the start, but some people bought into the marketing hype. The cap on those drinks was never going to come close to real milk, you know, which is made from dairy.
Bjerga says the news of declining sales of plant-based drinks should be reported with as much force as the distortion used to denigrate dairy products.