January 18

1/18 - Year over year milk output increased by 3.0% in November (the biggest jump in 6 years), following large, 2.3% increases in September & October. But that wasn’t nearly enough to keep a cap on cheese prices. On Jan 4, the USDA announced it will purchase an additional $1.5B through the Farmers to Families Food Box Program. CME block cheese prices, which had melted to lows of $1.5775/lb on Dec 22, reacted by surging to 1.9625 (Jan 11), before settling back to $1.83/lb on Friday (Jan 15). It was large cheese purchases for the Food Box program in 2020 that sent block cheese prices from Covid-driven, record lows of $1.00/ (Apr 15) to record highs of $3.00/lb (July 13). In last week’s WASDE report the USDA bumped its 2021 block cheese price forecast from $1.6350 to $1.7400/lb. Even so, it’s still well below a 6-year high of $2.01/lb (average) for 2020.