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September 10, 2021: Dairy Product Production

Milk production has grown tremendously this year. Every month through July has experienced year-over-year (YOY) growth. Through July, 3.41 billion more pounds of milk have been produced on U.S. dairy farms compared to 2020 after adjusting for 2020 leap year. This is a 2.6% increase in milk production compared to the first 7 months of…

September 3, 2021: Fluid Milk Sales

The Coronavirus Pandemic certainly made its mark on the U.S. dairy industry last year, and it continues to influence dairy markets even now. The result of business shutdowns and stay-at-home  requests by local, state, and federal governments had mixed results on dairy sales. When food service, a major user of cheese and butter products, was…

August 20, 2021: Survey-Based Corn Yield

As we approach harvest season and have a better idea of what yields will look like, USDA starts estimating yields based on actual survey results. The Aug. 12 Crop Production report is the first  estimate this year to use actual corn survey data to estimate yields. As with every year, different parts of the U.S….

August 13, 2021: Exports Through June

Milk price has been extremely volatile over the last year and a half, making it very difficult across the Northeast for dairy farmers to know what they will be paid for their milk. One bright spot over  that same period is exports. Without the volume of exports that have left U.S. borders since March 2020,…

August 6, 2021: Margins Sink Further in June

It is never a good thing when milk price falls and feed commodity prices increase. This has been the case for most of 2021. When milk price has managed to increase, feed costs have risen enough  to offset it. When feed prices have managed to decrease, the milk price has fallen enough to continue to…

July 30, 2021: July

The July 26, USDA Crop Progress report shows that the corn crop across the country is progressing on par with last year and, in general, on par with the five-year average: 79% of the U.S. corn  crop is silking, which is the same as last year but slightly above the five-year average of 73%. Pennsylvania,…

July 23, 2021: Shifting Utilization

In the two and half years I have been working in the Pennsylvania dairy industry, Pennsylvania has lost over 12% of its dairy farms, but the herd size of those remaining has increased by 6% to 89  cows per dairy in 2020. This does not sound like much of a herd size increase, but it…

July 16, 2021: Sustainability

Over the last 10 to 15 years, “sustainability” has become a hot topic. However, the definition of sustainability may be different depending on the individual asked. A simple definition prior to 15  years ago might have been the ability to maintain something at a certain rate, or for a dairy farmer, sustainability may be the…

July 9, 2021: Dairy Production and Stocks

May’s U.S. milk production posted a 4.6% year-over-year (YOY) increase to 19.9 bil. pounds. This was the largest YOY growth in nearly 10 years. With the release of the USDA Dairy Products report July 2, we have a full picture of what May dairy product stocks and production looked like because of a near 10-year…

July 2, 2021: High Feed Cost

In general, the largest expense on a dairy operation is by far the feed cost. Maybe a grazing herd’s feed costs are lower, but in the Northeast, cows cannot graze year-round and feed cost increases  in the winter with grasses dormant and perhaps covered by snow. Unfortunately, commodity prices began to rise last fall and…