While a tempting logic, in my understanding of the dairy market this is not correct. To my knowledge, here in Finland the big retail chains initiate auctions for the milk contracts, which are highly competed. If a producer tries to raise the price, they will likely not sell any milk at all. On top of that, milk is an important loss leader for the retail chains. The price is kept as low as possible, and it might even be sold at a loss, to tempt customers who will then compensate for this loss with the rest of their shopping basket. Against this, it would be very incorrect to assume that nobody bats an eye if the price of milk increases ten cents.
If the competition is that high, the farmers will have very low profit margins. Any extra expense needs to be added to the price.
This won’t affect competition much, as all farmers have the same tax and therefore the same need for increased price.
The only noteworthy thing I see here (based on your information) is that the extra tax is per cow, but the price increase will be on the milk. This will hit farmers with lower amount of milk per cow. I guess this is farmers with more focus on quality and animal welfare.
While a tempting logic, in my understanding of the dairy market this is not correct. To my knowledge, here in Finland the big retail chains initiate auctions for the milk contracts, which are highly competed. If a producer tries to raise the price, they will likely not sell any milk at all. On top of that, milk is an important loss leader for the retail chains. The price is kept as low as possible, and it might even be sold at a loss, to tempt customers who will then compensate for this loss with the rest of their shopping basket. Against this, it would be very incorrect to assume that nobody bats an eye if the price of milk increases ten cents.
If the competition is that high, the farmers will have very low profit margins. Any extra expense needs to be added to the price.
This won’t affect competition much, as all farmers have the same tax and therefore the same need for increased price.
The only noteworthy thing I see here (based on your information) is that the extra tax is per cow, but the price increase will be on the milk. This will hit farmers with lower amount of milk per cow. I guess this is farmers with more focus on quality and animal welfare.