Editorial: Butter price hike nothing new

Linda Hall, Assistant Editor, Hawke's Bay Today.

Many people are grumbling about the price of butter.

It apparently went up in price 11 per cent last month to what has been reported as a "record high" of $5.39 a block.

The price appears to differ from supermarket to supermarket and city to town.
However, I beg to differ.

A colleague sent me a photo she shared on her Facebook page back in 2015 when she was astounded to see the price of butter was $8.71 a block.

I remember when butter was 99 cents and cheese was not a luxury.

They, along with milk, should be affordable to every Kiwi - after all we produce some of the best in the world.

Maybe it's because for quite some time the "health experts" were telling us we should limit the amount of butter we had in our diets and that margarine was "better for us".

Now we are being told that actually butter is fine. Personally there was never any comparison for me.

You can't beat melted butter on toast - even toasted sandwiches are not quite the same with margarine.

Prices seems to fluctuate from month to month much the same as fruit and vegetables and have done for quite a few years now.

I found a story dated 2008 about people complaining about this very thing.

It's interesting really. Some people say that cows are bad for our environment but think about the consequences of having fewer and fewer bovines.

Commodities such as the ones I've been talking about would most likely only be affordable for the very wealthy.

Yes our rivers are in a mess but it's not all down to the farmers.