Milk Markets Mostly Higher

• While some months were higher today in Class III and IV, those gains only minimized weekly losses in the second half of 2023 for both classes.
• Spot markets found consistent buyers on the week, over 100 loads of cheese and 62 loads of whey were the leaders.
• April US milk production rose 0.61% year-over-year, while butterfat production was up 2.12% for the same time period.
• US dairy cow culling for the week ending June 17th, up 6.6% from the same week last year.

Despite a mainly positive day throughout Class III and Class IV futures to end the week, Q3 and Q4 averages for both classes were still significantly lower through the week.  Class III Q3 and Q4 averages fell $1.18/cwt and $0.82/cwt, settling at $15.067 and $17.37, respectively.  Class IV followed the lead and was down $0.247 and $0.57 for Q3 and Q4, settling at $17.73 and $18.053, respectively.  Keeping the premium to Class IV and also seemingly propping up the entirety of the dairy complex currently is butter, which has staved off lower prices and stayed relatively rangebound between $2.30-2.40/lb. for all of 2023.  The heavy volume of trading in the whey market brought marginal gains in today’s trade after settling at its lowest price ever yesterday, cheese was even on the day, while powder was lightly traded and remains well off the 2022 and 2023 highs.  Next week is relatively quiet for fundamentals here in the US with a short holiday week on tap but will have a Global Dairy Trade event while domestic markets are closed here on the 4th.  Next weeks communications will be slightly altered due to the holiday, expect the dairy video and typical dairy strategy email from Monday to come out on Wednesday the 5th along with the feed email that will cover today’s Planted Acreage report.