Commodities used in
Friday price
$/lb change $/lb change
*Barrel cheese is not used in
**Dry Whey (average of the
Western ‘mostly’) is used only in the Class 1 formula.
Cheese
– $2.00 again
The Block market had another rather amazing week and again
climbed to the $2.00 level. Most
noticeable was the lack of loads offered and sold at the CME.
Last week 63 loads of cheese (both Block and Barrel) were traded.
This week no loads of Block and only 3 of Barrel were traded.
The week ended with Barrel at a nice normal sedate 3 cents below Block.
It looks like the range of $1.80 to $2.20, which has now been firmly in
place for over a year, will continue for a while, but there is no indication of
big increases.
Butter
– Demand good
Prices dropped two cents early in the week and then held
even the balance of the week. Sales
volume at the CME was only 4 loads. Supply
and demand seem in reasonable balance.
Nonfat
Dry Milk – upward trend still in place for US
CWAP price down nearly 2.4 cents but volume is excellent
and current market shows prices better than reported averages.
There will be some continued up-ticks in our prices but Europe and
Oceania reports use the term “generally steady” to describe their market and
the current European market value of $1.79 (less freight), in the absence of
major weather events, may well mark the top of the NDM market for the time
being.
Whey products:
It is hard to find much optimism in these markets. Dry
Whey mostly prices are unchanged and some processors do not have building
inventories, which means, of course, others do have growing inventories.
Dry Whey NASS price declined 0.6 cents but with high volumes sold. WPC 34
prices continue to slide but not quite so rapidly as in past weeks.
Page 2:
Weekly Update

Cheese
utilization percentage dropping:
A year ago 50.6 % of the milk solids-not-fat pooled in
<<<<
>>>>
Whey
Review Committee – it was the final meeting
Last Thursday the WRC met for the last time.
The cold reporting would simply say that on a vote of
A second vote of some interest is the recommendation to
consider a much larger study/review of the whole cheese pricing system,
specifically including the consideration of partial (or complete) deregulation
of 4b prices. This suggestion was
approved by a vote of 10 to 3.
CDFA staff will prepare a ‘white paper’ recommendation
to the Secretary which will be circulated to the committee prior to delivery.
Without doubt there will be much more to report on this matter in the
weeks to come.
CWT
accepts 209 bids in fifth round
Given the uncertainty of the times, I am surprised that
there were not more bids acceptable to CWT.
The West once again had the highest number of cows accepted but there is
no breakdown between the Northwest and
I track the milk supply in
Corn
Con: Opinion shifting
Keith Collins, former chief economist for USDA this week
put out a fantastic insider view of last Decembers ethanol debate when he said
that they expected the ethanol mandates to increase the price of corn from about
$2 per bushel to $3 a bushel which was judged to be an acceptable price shift
“cost”. At that level everyone
would be reasonably happy. Kind of misjudged that one, did they not?
Come on Senators Harkin, Grassley and Obama, admit that you overshot the
target. It is time to review entire
program. Mandates are a seriously
flawed policy device – go back to incentives.
You can have your tariff and subsidies but not the mandates.
Bill Van Dam