Production records

set in 2011 for multiple dairy commodities

Statistics released this month indicated that production records were set during 2011 for cheese in both Wisconsin and the United States and for both butter and yogurt in the United States.

The year's records were bolstered by high production volumes in December, including a record high in any month for mozzarella cheese in the country and for all cheese in any single month in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is on a run of 10 consecutive years of record cheese production, culminating with 2.637 billion pounds in 2011. This was an increase of nearly 27 million pounds or just over one percent from 2010.

California's cheese production in 2011 was 2.246 billion pounds, up 2.2 percent from 2010 but short of the state's record production of 2.287 billion pounds in 2007.

For the United States, cheese production in 2011 totaled 10.61 billion pounds with Wisconsin and California combining for 46 percent of the total. This was 173 million pounds or 1.7 percent more than in 2010.

The nation's cheese production in 2011 represented a 75 percent or more than 4 billion pound increase from the 6.055 billion pounds produced in 1991.

Butter production hit a 70-year high in 2011. The nation's butter output last year was 1.805 billion pounds - a 15.4 percent jump from 2010.

Yogurt production was also at a record high of 4.276 billion pounds in 2011. This was an increase of 2.3 percent from a year earlier.

Milk lactose production also hit a record high in 2011 but dry whey production was at its second lowest total in 24 years and non-fat dry milk production of 1.518 billion pounds was 2.9 percent lower than in 2010 but on a virtual par with 2008 and 2009.

Production of skim milk powder, however, jumped by 75 percent to a total of 446 million pounds in 2011.

In tune with the high volume theme, a couple of busy trading days for Cheddar cheese were recorded during the past week in the spot market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

Ten carloads of blocks were sold on Friday, Feb. 3 and 15 carloads of barrels were sold on Monday of this week.

Cheddar cheese prices traded a narrow range with small daily changes through Tuesday of this week.

The Cheddar block price stood at $1.48 per pound after two offers to sell were not covered and the Cheddar barrel price slipped by .25-cent to $1.5025 after one unfilled bid and one uncovered offer.

The AA butter spot market prices continued to drop to their lowest point in more than a year. Including a 1.75-cent per pound fall on Tuesday, the price was at $1.4450 after a market day of one unfilled bid and one uncovered offer.

Even more noticeable was the sharp fall in non-fat dry milk spot market prices starting on Tuesday of last week.

There was no market activity on Tuesday of this week as the prices remained at $1.2975 per pound for Grade Extra and $1.3325 for Grade A.

The same trend has taken over in the dry whey futures market. The February price has fallen to 64.225 cents per pound, March to 57 cents, July to 46.3 cents and February of 2013 to 38.5 cents.

Nearby months also continued to suffer price losses in the Class III milk futures market.

On Tuesday of this week, they fell by 34 cents per hundred for March and 28 cents of April, leaving the prices for those months at $15.54 and $15.75 per hundred respectively.

The February futures price fell by 6 cents per hundred to $16.09 on Tuesday. This is down by 96 cents from the January Class III price of $17.05 per hundred, which was already a $1.72 drop from the December price.

For the latter half of 2012, the Class III futures were trading in the high $16s per hundred. They then drop to the mid to low $16s for most of 2013 and to $15.10 per hundred for January of 2014.

Cooperatives Working Together has announced the acceptance of a batch of 35 bids from Bongard's Creamery, Land O'Lakes, Foremost Farms, Dairy Farmers of America, United Dairymen of Arizona, and O-AT-KA (northern New York).

This bid was for assistance on the export of 3.763 million pounds of Cheddar cheese and 3.411 million pounds of butter to countries in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa from February to June.

CWT notes that its efforts represented a significant part of the exports, which accounted for 13.3 percent, on a milk solids basis, of the nation's milk production in 2011.