Cheese, Cheese, Cheese

The?prior article?covered the financial shifts of butter prices, the reasons behind them, and the impact on producer milk prices.?This post will cover the more complicated financial shifts of cheese prices.?Chart I shows the price of cheese beginning with 2017.?During the COVID lockdown, cheese prices were extremely volatile with some major highs and lows.?Those fluctuations were caused by the disruption between food service and retail sales of cheese.?The current high Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) cheese price of $2.29 per pound is a near record ignoring the extreme fluctuations that occurred in 2020.

The survey data for the AMS cheese price is more complicated than the price of butter.?Butter is butter with few significant differences.?There are many different types of cheese with varying values.?The USDA process for developing a price for cheese was implemented in 2020 and relies on surveys of only one type of cheese, newly produced Cheddar cheese.

How does this influence milk component prices and producer milk payments? Click here