With Americans staying home more than usual because of the pandemic, and doing lots of baking and cooking to pass the time, this has been a banner year for butter.
Land O’Lakes, the Minnesota-based dairy cooperative, expects to sell 275 million to 300 million pounds of the stuff this year — a 20% increase — as rising retail demand more than makes up for lost restaurant business. Nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, butter production is up 6% over the first nine months of the year and is on track to top two billion pounds for the first time since 1943.
This year’s boom is, as is apparent from the chart, part of a longer-term comeback. On a per-capita basis, Americans eat far less butter than they did in the early decades of the 20th century. But they eat more than they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Bloomberg News
