Milk production up,

product prices down

For the 23rd consecutive month through December 2011, milk production in the United States has been higher than in the comparable month for the previous year.

Milk production in Wisconsin has increased for the seventh consecutive year and, for the third consecutive year, the state has set a new milk production record.

Milk production numbers for December and for all of 2011 were released on Monday of this week by the National Agricultural Statistics Service and its Wisconsin field office.

They indicated a 1.8 percent increase in milk production across the country for 2011 to a total of 196.216 billion pounds compared to the 192.819 billion pounds for 2010.

For December 2011, milk production was up by 2.7 percent in the top 23 states and by 2.5 percent for all 50 states compared to December 2010. The total production in the preliminary report for the top 23 states for the month was 15.425 billion pounds.

Wisconsin's milk production of 2.214 billion pounds for December was 2.6 percent more than for the month in 2010. It gave the state an unofficial production of a record 26.139 billion pounds for 2011 - an increase of 104 million pounds or .4 percent from 2010.

Both in Wisconsin and the United States, milk production per cow was one ingredient in the increase for December. A buildup in cow numbers was also a contributing factor.

For the top 23 states in December, average milk per cow was 1,818 pounds - up by 27 pounds from a year earlier. In Wisconsin, the average increase per cow was 45 pounds to a total of 1,750 pounds for December.

Cow numbers in Wisconsin stood at 1.265 million for December in the past two years but the national total for the top 23 states increased by 99,000 to 8.486 million head.

States with the top increases were California with 30,000 more for a total of 1.779 million head, Texas with 15,000, New Mexico with 13,000, Michigan and Washington with 9,000 each, and Arizona and Idaho with 7,000 each while Minnesota was down by 5,000 to 465,000 and Pennsylvania was off by 4,000 cows to 539,000.

While milk production continued to increase, spot market prices for Cheddar cheese and AA continued to drop on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange during the past week.

The same was true in the futures market for dry whey, whose high prices have been a significant underpinning of Class III milk prices in recent months.

The Cheddar cheese prices stabilized in light trading in the spot market by Wednesday of this week but they were still down by 5 and 4 cents, respectively for blocks and barrels compared to a week earlier.

In the market on Wednesday, two carloads of blocks were sold and a bid for one carload was not filled as the price held at $1.5050 per pound. The Cheddar barrel price remained at $1.4850 per pound after one unfilled bid on Wednesday.

After an unfilled bid for one carload and an uncovered offer to sell two carloads on the Wednesday, the AA butter spot market price stood at $1.56 per pound - down 1.75 cents from a week earlier.

In the quiet non-fat dry milk spot market, prices remained at $1.48 per pound for Grade Extra and $1.45 for Grade A.

Price erosion continued for the first half of 2012 in the futures market for dry whey on Wednesday of this week.

The February price was still at 70.3 cents per pound but the price had slipped to 53.50 cents by June of 2012 to the 40 cents by January of 2013 - a drop of about $1.80 per hundred in dry whey's role on the Class III milk price from February of 2012 to January of 2013.

Class III milk futures prices were mixed but down for most months of the upcoming year in trades on Wednesday.

Some monthly prices for the first half of 2012 were up by 10 to 20 cents per hundred from a week earlier but they stood in a fairly narrow range of the low $17s and high $16s per hundred for all months of 2012.

Entering its final trading week, the January futures were $17.09 per hundred. August posted the year's highest price of $17.20 on Wednesday.

Then the Class III futures drop to the lower half of the $16s for most of 2013 and to the $15s for the last quarter of the year.

Cooperatives Working Together has announced the acceptance of a batch of 18 bids from Bongard's Creamery of Minnesota, Dairy Farmers of America and Darigold Cooperative of Seattle.

The bids were for export assistance on the delivery of a total of 4.015 million pounds of Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses to countries in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Central America by June of this year.