Agricultural Pricing: What Prices to Charge for Dairy Products


Problem Statement

The government of a country wants to decide what prices should be charged for its dairy products, milk, butter and cheese.[22] All these products arise directly or indirectly from the country’s raw milk production. This raw milk is usefully divided into the two components of fat and dry matter. After subtracting the quantities of fat and dry matter which are used for making products for export or consumption on the farms there is a total yearly availability of 600,000 tons of fat and 750,000 tons of dry matter. This is all available for producing milk, butter and two kinds of cheese for domestic consumption.

The percentage compositions of the products are given in Table 21.1.

For the previous year the domestic consumption and prices for the products are given in Table 21.2.

Table 21.1:  

 

Fat

Dry matter

Water

Milk

4

9

87

Butter

80

2

18

Cheese 1

35

30

35

Cheese 2

25

40

35


Table 21.2:  

 

Milk

Butter

Cheese 1

Cheese 2

Domestic consumption (1000 tons)

4820

320

210

70

Price (£/ton)

297

720

1050

815


Price elasticities of demand, relating consumer demand to the prices of each product, have been calculated on the basis of past statistics. The price elasticity E of a product is defined by

\[  E = \frac{\text {percentage decrease in demand}}{\text {percentage increase in price}}.  \]

For the two makes of cheese there will be some degree of substitution in consumer demand depending on relative prices. This is measured by cross-elasticity of demand with respect to price. The cross-elasticity $E_{\text {AB}}$ from a product A to a product B is defined by

\[  E_{\text {AB}} = \frac{\text {percentage increase in demand for A}}{\text {percentage increase in price of B}}.  \]

The elasticities and cross-elasticities are given in Table 21.3.

The objective is to determine what prices and resultant demand will maximize total revenue.

It is, however, politically unacceptable to allow a certain price index to rise. As a result of the way this index is calculated this limitation simply demands that the new prices must be such that the total cost of last year’s consumption would not be increased. A particularly important additional requirement is to quantify the economic cost of this political limitation.

Table 21.3:  

       

Cheese 1

Cheese 2

       

to

to

Milk

Butter

Cheese 1

Cheese 2

Cheese 2

Cheese 1

0.4

2.7

1.1

0.4

0.1

0.4




[22] Reproduced with permission of John Wiley & Sons Ltd. (Williams 1999, pp. 252–253).