Thursday, March 17, 2011

Cheese Production



(click on image to enlarge)

A reader commented on yesterday's post:

I'm sure this was unintentional, but if you take only the milk going into Class III and then divide it by the cheese produced in the US, that number would have no relevance. Idaho and California are #2 and # 3 in cheese production in the US and are not in any Federal Order, so counting their cheese lbs in your calculation, but leaving out their milk lbs. wouldn't be a relevant way in which to determine the amount of cheese that should have been produced in the US. I'm sure it was an oversight, but if you do include ID/CA milk lbs. the number makes perfect sense. Cheese standards are enforced, and constantly questioning the quality of our cheese without any real basis will only cause the uniformed to decide not to consume our cheese, now that wouldn 't be good for cheese sales, would it???
Your more relevant comment above John, which you seem to ignore, is that "$1.65 cheese prices don't work with current input costs" Your right on that one, but it's not the cheese markets' fault, it's the feed price, directly caused by our nations Ethanol Policy, why don't you focus more on that, than on inaccurate and statistically flawed numbers, wouldn't that make more sense, and be more productive?




Actually I did consider national milk production. As can be seen above, official data from CDFA for Cheddar is very close to my estimate.

Hard cheese production in 2006 was 3,912, 670, 000 pounds in 2009 the amount was 4, 200, 500, 000 pounds. Data on the use of NFDM going into hard cheese is tracked by ADPI. In 2006 561 million pound went into hard cheese. In 2009, the last year of available data from ADPI, the amount of NFDM going to hard cheese was 398.9 million pounds.

So, it is reasonable to conclude cheese standards are "not" being enforced.

The real dirty tricks are done inn the "pizza cheese" vat.

Keeping quiet about all this is in no one's best interest.

I realize ethanol production raises costs to dairy farmers but, rather than complain about what other farmers are getting, dairy farmers might go a little easy on the grain scoop

But, we come back to the same thing. Under capitalism, selling price should equal costs plus profit. In dairy, capitalism has failed to follow its own dictates. Dairy needs a real market.

5 comments:

  1. John, do you know who this weeks cheese traders have been?

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  2. On the sell side:

    Mullins
    Dairy States
    Hoogwegt

    with Mullins in the lead. Dairy States is a broker which generally come in when someone wants to hide real identities.

    On the buy side:

    Schreiber
    Kroger?
    Gavilon
    FAUL
    AMPI
    Jacoby

    A recement comment maintained AMPI had sold all the loads in the first week of March, which is not quite right but, close. One could have made the case AMPI had too much cheese. Now, a few days later they are buying, which would lead one to think they do not have enough cheese. Or that we really have a dysfunctional system which the cheer leaders call a market.

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  3. John,
    Why do you continually state that the dairy market is under a free market system or capitalism?
    With the Federal order pricing, zone differentials, the government mandated formula for pricing class 2, 3,and 4 milk, the government restriction on forward pricing class 1 milk, government mandated make allowances for processors and all the other government involvement in the milk market, we may have fascism, socialism or even close to central planning as a market system but not capitalism.

    Jeff Burdick Sr.

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  4. 26 loads sold today and the magic $1.65 was reached. All of a sudden there's a bunch of fresh cheese? Where did it come from? No butter inventory but the price drops? What's up with that?

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  5. Where do you find out who participates on the CME?

    ReplyDelete