As per my thread yesterday a chunk of it is driven by farmers holding out because they need to pass on their hugely increased costs.

Like amithecuck and sails, I too would be very interested to hear about things that deflect blame away from the Tories

My point is not political. Farmers finally have a chance to try and increase the crap amounts they are paid by supermarkets because the cost of getting stuff to the farm has gone up, the cost of actually producing their product has gone up and the cost of then getting it to the next stage of the process has gone up.  At the same time we've massively reduced they subsidies they receive so without supermarkets agreeing to pay them more there will simply be less available which of course in turn pushes the price up again.  Combine that with the droughts in Europe and it's a perfect storm of inflationary pressure for fresh produce.

If there's a CMA investigation it needs to look at the supermarkets colluding in what they pay farmers rather than looking at collusion on retail prices.

That can't be right for all farmers though sails becuase milk is coming down in price. 

I guess that might in part be due to warmer weather (so lower energy costs) and dairy cattle being able to feed on pasture now (so lower feed costs). You'd expect other pastoral farming products to benefit similarly ...

Of course, arable farmers won't see the same reduction in input costs and a lot of the fertilisers that came from Ukraine are still constrained.

No that's just once again supermarkets using milk as a loss leader and looking to make people feel that things are getting better so they might start buying some more expensive stuff again.

Feed costs are just about to ramp up as it's time to start making silage for next winter which means hiring in mowers, forage harvesters and specialist trailers unless you're a seriously big operation.  The cost of running your milking plant will have gone down a bit due to electricity prices falling but you're moving into the time of year that needs more power to keep the milk chilled until it's collected.

I would have thought it is because milk is a raw product so no supply chain for costs to work through and no heating costs. Compare to e.g. hens where avian flu imposed massive costs on top of heating costs for hen houses and feed that needs to be ordered in in advance. 

Food inflation will drop once the energy and other costs from August 2022 onwards are out of the system and gougers are shamed into dropping their "what can we do" act. 

Maybe that's right.

On the link you've provided on the other thread it said of food inflation  that  "the largest negative contributions came from bread and cereals; fish; milk, cheese and eggs; and sugar, jam and honey. The largest positive contribution came from vegetables (including potatoes and other tubers)"

Sails they have abandoned some other loss leaders like the BOGOF deals and price comparison discounts because they've noticed customers are still finding the money not to need to offer those...

Milk has cooling costs on the farm until collected and then has to be pasteurised which of course involves heating it.

No Ami because they've also dropped the price of another classic loss leader bread.  Grain prices have come down but for this year's harvest so the grain going into bread now will have been bought at the top of the market.  Some of it will come from bakeries having slightly lower costs now energy prices are dropping again.  They also won't move straight from one situation you posit to the other.