Producer Pay Forecast: November 21, 2025

USDA is catching up on reporting now that the government shutdown is over. The dairy products, weekly slaughter, milk production, and export reports have been updated with 1-2 months of new data. Unfortunately, the cold storage report does not have a release date as of yet, so we are still unaware of dairy product stock levels after August. This new information has been taken into account for the forecast attached here.

A few important notes from the newly released data:

Milk Cows & Production

• The U.S milking herd was +2.4% (YoY Aug) and is +2% (YTD)
• U.S milk per cow grew 1.5% (YoY Oct) and is up 1% (YTD)
• U.S milk production was +4% (YoY Sep) and +3.9% (YoY Oct)
• U.S milk production is +2% (YTD)

Slaughter

• -5.8% (YoY Aug) and -6.8% (YTD)

Dairy Products Report

• Butter production +8.1% (YoY Aug) and +5.6% (YTD)
• Total cheese production +0.5% (YoY Aug)
• Cheddar cheese production +2.1% (YoY Aug)—modest growth compared to the previous five months
• American cheese production +0.3% (YoY Aug)—modest compared to prior five months
• Dry whey production grew 4.7% (YoY Aug)
• NFDM production is -5% (YTD)

Exports

• Cheese exports grew 28% (YoY Aug)—record for largest month of cheese exports ever
• Butter exports were +190% (YoY Aug) and are +132% (YTD)
• NFDM exports were down 18% (YoY Aug)

It is clear that the U.S continued to experience export strength through August, but it remains to be seen if the drop in global dairy prices due to abundant milk supply has resulted in additional competition for the U.S. If world prices continue to come down, we will likely see a further decline in the U.S to remain competitive. Without competitive pricing, the U.S will lose the export strength needed to relieve the oversupply issues we continue to face.

CME Update:

Spot butter and cheese prices continued to fall, bringing Class III and Class IV futures down with them. Today (11/21), spot butter ended at $1.4775/lb., and spot blocks at $1.55/lb. Dry whey, which had been offering support to Class III values over the last few weeks, came down to $0.76/lb. (11/21). Spot NDM has experienced a peculiar spike over the last week, climbing to $1.1825/lb. today, despite no apparent change in demand.

As always, please feel free to reach out to Allee Coombe at acoombe@uncdairy.com with any questions or comments.

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