The dairy markets are falling under the weight of heavy milk production. CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) dropped 4.5ȼ this week to $2.045 per pound. Every NDM futures contract settled south of $2, far below the spot market’s spring peak at nearly $2.30. Spot whey powder fell 3ȼ this week to 67ȼ, its lowest price since late March. CME spot Cheddar blocks slipped 0.25ȼ to $1.4725, a fresh three-month low. But butter bucked the trend. It climbed 2.5ȼ to $1.6925. Prices followed a

The U.S. cattle industry has been characterized by cycles of inventory and prices since the modern ranching industry developed in the late 1800s. There have been twelve cyclical inventory peaks in the last 129 years, with the first in 1890 and most recently in 2019 (Figure 1). Cycles have been persistent regardless of whether the inventory has been trending higher or lower. From the current inventory low (maybe, depending on drought), the most important question in the indust

The April Dairy Margin Coverage program margin climbed 97 cents from March to settle at $10.54 per cwt, the highest margin realized in 2026 to date The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) Agricultural Prices report, released May 29, established last month’s Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program calculations. The price for all key feedstuffs used to calculate the margin rose in April, revealing an income over feed cost of $10.54 per hundredweight (cwt), more tha