Experienced dairy traders from T.C. Jacoby & Co. discuss issues, trends and dairy market movements that will impact the prices paid to U.S. dairy farmers for the milk they produce. Episodes are posted each month just before the previous month's final checks are paid to dairy farmers.
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Experienced dairy traders from T.C. Jacoby & Co. discuss issues, trends and dairy market movements that will impact the prices paid to U.S. dairy farmers for the milk they produce. Episodes are posted each month just before the previous month's final checks are paid to dairy farmers.
The U.S. dairy market is balanced on a knife’s edge, and everyone’s wondering what the summer will bring.
In this week’s episode of The Milk Check, the Jacoby team convenes to dissect a dairy market that feels balanced – barely.
From milk still trickling in past the flush to range-bound commodity prices, this episode covers the major trends shaping the back half of 2025.
Cheese exports are keeping Class III in check
Culling numbers are down as producers are keeping heifers longer
Global butterfat advantage fading with tighter GDT spreads
WPC, WPI demand stable, but new production capacity looms
And what if prices fall off the edge? From trade risks to recession fears, the industry feels one light push from price chaos.
Listen now for insights on margins, milk flows and market forces.
The Jacoby Team:
Diego Carvallo, Director, Dry Dairy Ingredient Trading
Jacob Menge, Vice President of Risk Management & Trade Strategy
Joe Maixner, Director of Sales, Dairy Ingredients
Josh White, Vice President, Dairy Ingredients
Mike Brown, Vice President of Dairy Market Intelligence
Ted Jacoby III, CEO & President, Cheese, Butter & Dry Ingredients
Intro (with music):
Welcome to The Milk Check, a podcast from TC Jacoby & Co., where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind.
Ted Jacoby III:
Hello everybody, and welcome to this month's version of The Milk Check podcast by TC Jacoby & Co. This week, we will have a classic market discussion. It is June 9th, so we're approaching the midpoint in the month of June 2025, and joining me today are Diego Carvallo, our Director of Dry Dairy Ingredients Trading. Jacob Menge is our vice president of risk management and trading strategy. Josh White, our Vice President of Dairy Ingredients. Mike Brown, our VP of Market Intelligence. Joe Maixner, our director of dairy ingredients and resident butter expert, is also there.
I think we'll go ahead and start with milk. It's the middle of June. We're past the flush, but milk is probably a little bit heavier than we expected. Milk production has been up. We know what is going on. The dairy farmers are making money, and they're keeping cows. Their culling numbers are down, and so we're seeing cow numbers up, maybe a little bit surprisingly, given what we know about the heifer replacement numbers, which means they're keeping them for an extra lactation, that is keeping milk solids output maybe a little bit lower than we expected. But the solids are still up as well. So as a result, we're seeing milk still on the long side, not too much out of what is normal for this time of year, and I wouldn't be surprised as the weather in the upper Midwest starts to heat up, we start to see that milk production drop off a little bit and everything get a little bit tighter. We just haven't quite reached that high temperature yet.
And so that's what we're seeing in milk. Jake, how does that translate into cheese? What are we seeing in the cheese market right now?
Jacob Menge:
It's funny, I think from the last time we had a market discussion to today, the message will be very similar, which is a lot of mixed signals on the cheese side. You can talk to certain people who say, Hey, our orders are way down.
The Milk Check
Experienced dairy traders from T.C. Jacoby & Co. discuss issues, trends and dairy market movements that will impact the prices paid to U.S. dairy farmers for the milk they produce. Episodes are posted each month just before the previous month's final checks are paid to dairy farmers.
