Americans have renewed their love affair with butter, slathering it on corn, plopping pats in their coffee and even using it to mix cocktails.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected that 2017 consumption will rise 10 percent from a year earlier, hitting 940,000 metric tons, the highest in half a century. The nation will devour more than 2 billion pounds of butter this year, more than 6.1 pounds per person, and the resurgence has helped make Dallas Wuethrich a billionaire. His Grassland Dairy Products Inc., founded in 1904 by his grandfather John, who churned it by hand, now produces about one-third of the nation’s butter.