Does perfect weather mean bad news for dairy?



In this episode of The Milk Check, Ted Jacoby III and the Jacoby team welcome guests from Cefetra Dairy, Henk-Jan Bouwman, Head of Account Management; Martijn Goedhart, Managing Director; and Veljko Perovic, Commodity Market Analyst and Derivatives Trader.



Together, we unpack why the world is swimming in butter and what it means for producers, traders and processors heading into 2026.



You’ll hear:








Why too much 80% salted has the U.S. sloshing in inventory



How Europe went from record highs to €2,000-per-ton losses



When demand might finally catch up with supply




Click play below and listen now to The Milk Check episode 84: Swimming in Butter – Global Insights from Cefetra Group.



Got questions?



Got questions for The Milk Check team? We’ve got answers. Submit your questions below and we’d be happy to get back to you or answer your question on the podcast.




Ask The Milk Check












Ted Jacoby III: Welcome everybody to The Milk Check, a T.C. Jacoby & Co. podcast.



We have a really exciting episode today. We are going to be discussing the U.S. and European butter markets and how that's going to affect global butter supply, global butter demand, and obviously price. We are joined today by our good friends from Cefetra Dairy.



We've got Martijn, Henk-Jan, and Veljko from Cefetra Dairy. Really looking forward to this discussion.



Joe, we're gonna start with you. What's going on with the U.S. butter market? We've just dropped in the last two months, what, 60, 70¢? I feel like the bottom just dropped out. What's been driving this, and how's this gonna play out going forward?



Joe Maixner: Well, long story short, there's too much 80% salted sitting in inventories,



both in trader's hands and in manufacturer's hands. There was a lot of product built earlier in the year when there was a great carry in the market [00:01:00] and when cream was plentiful.



All of that product is coming back to the market because cream is still plentiful and manufacturers aren't needing it for micro fixing. Demand has been good, but not great.



Ted Jacoby III: Is it safe to say that even if we're having good butter demand in the U.S. right now, it doesn't compare to the increase in supply we're dealing with?



Joe Maixner: Absolutely. We're so much higher year over year on fat component and milk production that we just physically can't consume as much butter as we're producing.



Ted Jacoby III: Mike Brown, my question for you is this, we've come down from $3.50 two years ago, $2.50 earlier this year, now we're at a $1.75. We've talked a lot about on this program how the genetics have dairy cows producing a lot more butterfat than they have in years past, and that's a trend that has really changed the supply side dynamic for butterfat in the U.S. At a $1.75, does that trend change?



Mike Brown: The genetic trend of course won't change 'cause it's permanent .



People have been making decisions to improve fat content of milk for a long, long time. It's been [00:02:00] emphasized because of the high value of fat. And so it's already built into not only the current dairy herd, but the animals that will be replacements over the next two or three years.



On the feeding side, that's another story,