Does milk cost less than it did in the 1980s?

Americans have made clear to politicians that rising prices are a major concern. But has milk escaped inflationary pressure? That’s what a New York congressional candidate recently said.

Blake Gendebien is a farmer seeking the Democratic nomination in New York’s 21st Congressional District, which will come open because Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik is retiring. 

In a Jan. 30 X post, Gendebien wrote that milk prices “currently are no higher than they were in 1980’s, even as fuel, feed, and equipment costs keep climbing.”

A spokesperson for Gendebien’s office, Georgia Greenleaf, pointed PolitiFact New York to federal price data. We looked at the numbers and found that Gendebien had a point, although the comparison needs some explanation.

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics has tracked the price of milk since January 1980. Until June 1995, it measured the price per half gallon. Since July 1995, it has measured the price per gallon. To make the data series comparable over the full period, we multiplied the half-gallon prices from January 1980 to June 1995 by two and kept the subsequent data the same, at one gallon. (This isn’t a perfect adjustment, since purchasing larger quantities of an item often leads to a bit of a price break, but it’s a reasonable estimate.)

Next, we divided each month’s per-gallon milk price by the January 1980 price to show how much it had risen from that baseline.

This calculation showed that the price of milk has roughly doubled from $2.03 to $4.03 per gallon since January 1980.

So if you look at the price of milk in isolation, it hasn’t stayed constant since the 1980s. But if you compare the rise in the price of milk to overall consumer price inflation — the most reasonable way of measuring price changes over a 46-year period — milk has risen in price by far less than other items have.

From January 1980 to February 2026, overall consumer prices have more than quadrupled. That’s about twice as fast as milk prices have risen since January 1980.

Alan Bjerga, National Milk Producers Federation executive vice president of communications and industry relations, agreed that today’s prices are “lower in real dollars” — that is, accounting for inflation.

The main reason is greater efficiency at the farm level, experts said. According to the Council on Dairy Cattle Breeding, U.S. dairy cattle produced four times as much milk per cow in 2021 as in 1945, and twice as much as in 1970. This increase stems from improvements in genetic selection and herd management, the council found.

Because the average cow produces much more milk in 2026, Bjerga said, the average farmer has much more milk to sell, and with greater supply comes lower prices.

“It’s fair to say that nominal farm-level milk prices have not increased at the US national rate of inflation,” said Alex White, a Virginia Tech agricultural economics and management instructor.

Our ruling

Gendebien said milk prices “currently are no higher than they were in 1980’s.”

That’s not the case using nominal dollars — but few products stay the same in price over more than a four-decade span. When comparing prices over a period that long, economists typically factor in overall consumer price inflation.

Using that method, milk has seen price increases far below that of overall consumer prices. Milk prices have roughly doubled since January 1980, compared to a rough quadrupling for consumer prices overall. In that context, it’s reasonable to say that milk prices are no higher than they were in the 1980s.

The statement is accurate but needs additional information, so we rate it Mostly True.