Milk Production Up Driving Prices Down

Milk production forecasts from the USDA continue to show a year over year increase and that has meant a downward trend for prices.

Outlook Board Chair Seth Meyer said prices are down for butter, as well as nonfat dry milk whey.

“Those are really influenced by how competitive we are in the global market and that’s been a pretty tough competitive market. We moved prices down for the rest of ’17 and 2018 to reflect that more competitive market.”

Forecasts show decreasing for all milk classes and the all-milk price though that is still higher than it was at this time last year.

Meyer said there is one success story in the dairy industry.

“For cheese, we’ve had a slight increase in 2017 [prices] on what we’ve observed about pretty good demand despite large supplies.”

The all-milk price is now $18.05 per hundredweight, up a quarter from 2017.