Why is plant-based milk like almond milk more expensive than regular cow's milk?

There are many valid (and obvious) answers here like economies of scale, but one of the biggest reasons is:

Cow's milk is actually highly subsidized by many governments to protect dairy farmers.

So it's not just that almond milk is expensive. Cow's milk is also ridiculously cheap vs the actual cost of production.

References:

1. My boss, who grew up in a dairy farm in Austria. He told me that without government subsidies, it's more expensive to sell the raw milk to processors than to just dump the milk. This has been increasingly the case more recently as the industry is becoming more highly consolidated.

2. The Milk System, a documentary by Netflix

3. Articles like this one. You can find a lot of information about this topic if you just search for it.

Economies of scale​​​