A new year often brings a forecast look at the year ahead in the dairy industry. A recent webinar by Andrea Lendwig of IFCN Dairy Research Network looked a decade out in the global dairy markets. To evaluate and forecast future trends, Lendwig first looked back at the recent past. Global milk production – solid-corrected milk standardized to 4% fat and 3.3% protein – had risen 2.7% annually from 2010 to 2020 but only grew 2% per year on average in the last five years. On the

USDA launched its Crop Production Annual Summary yesterday, which contains final numbers for hay production, acreage, and average yields in 2025. According to the report, forage production was relatively stable from 2024 to 2025, with slight improvements for several categories. Although year-over-year fluctuations for total production and harvested acres appeared for individual states across the board, there were few instances of any drastic changes, and those likely reflect

Brazil surpassed the U.S. as the world’s top beef producer last year, according to market estimates, after the South American country beat output forecasts by hundreds of thousands of tons, easing a global supply squeeze and helping limit a surge in meat prices. Brazil was already the biggest beef exporter, shipping meat worth almost $17 billion in 2025, according to government trade data released on Tuesday. Beef production numbers are not due until February, but analysts ha