PA Dairy Summit tackles milk pricing: Bozic digs into Class I, FMMO system

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Agmoos

Dr. Marin Bozic at the PA Dairy Summit Feb. 2

By Sherry Bunting, published in Farmshine, Feb. 11, 2022

LANCASTER, Pa. — “The Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) system is built around Class I fluid milk… if no changes are made, they can just collapse, west of the Mississippi,” said Dr. Marin Bozic, a University of Minnesota associate professor of applied economics speaking to over 300 farm and industry attendees of the Pennsylvania Dairy Summit in Lancaster on Feb. 2.

Dr. Bozic showed how the U.S. is now exporting more milk on a solids basis than is being sold in the domestic beverage category. This development is sending shockwaves through a Federal Milk Marketing Order system in which only Class I fluid milk handlers are required to participate.

Fluid milk sales are declining and being overtaken by the increasing export category — leading processors to lose interest in FMMO participation, he said.

Class I fluid milk handlers are the only ones required to participate in FMMOs. It is voluntary for all others.

As markets shift, Bozic predicts continued reductions in producer price differentials, forecasting the average Northeast PPD to decline by more than 20% over the next eight years.

He also cited the impact of inefficient milk movement stimulated by FMMO pool access provisions. This could also apply to state-regulated over-order premiums. Location-based Class I premiums can fuel inefficient movement of packaged fluid milk from more distant lower-cost-of-production areas. (When local milk is displaced, hauling costs go up.)

“What can we do to give FMMOs a new lease on life?” Bozic asked, observing that future reforms should prepare them to survive in a time when the U.S. is increasingly exporting more milk on a solids basis than in the beverage category.

Bozic said national hearings on FMMO changes could happen after the midterm elections but may not happen until after the 2023 Farm Bill, and NMPF and IDFA are working on their positions.

He referenced a working paper about modernizing U.S. milk pricing and how pricing is done in other countries. Bozic authored the paper together with Blimling and Associates, and it was released at the IDFA convention in January. It is available and anticipating feedback at https://www.idfa.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Modernizing_US_Milk_Pricing_Working_Paper_012522.pdf

Right now, he said, “Milk is being priced like it’s 1999, but it’s 2022.”

For starters, he said, the standard component test should be raised to reflect current national averages that are higher than in 1999. Butterfat, for example, stands at an average 4.0, but standard test is still 3.5.

Bozic also predicted that over the next two years, the embedded make allowances in the pricing formulas will be increased. He said processors are already re-blending pay prices to accomplish a higher ‘make allowance’ internally. He cited New Zealand’s system that frequently updates manufacturing costs used to determine producer prices.

He was quick to point out that when make allowances are adjusted, it would be tools like the monthly Milk Check Transparency Report that Bozic is working on — along with some ideas for contract fairness — that would put processors on notice that they can’t just re-blend their pay prices on top of a make allowance adjustment. That would be double-dipping.

Answering questions about producer ‘cost of production’ and ‘cost-plus’ pricing, Bozic explained that in the UK, retailers are starting to use a ‘Fairness for Farmers’ label by doing a cost-plus contract model where they use accountants to measure dairy farm costs of production, along with a consumer price index, to price milk three months at a time.

One key difference, however, is the interstate commerce clause in the U.S. Constitution makes it impossible to keep milk from areas with a lower cost of production from moving to undercut price structures in areas with a higher cost of production. Feed cost could be used, which is a bit more universal, but still varies by region.

With dairy farms in the UK similarly sized with similar cost structures to farms in the Class I markets of the eastern U.S., such ideas are worth exploring, he said, noting that fluid milk prices in the UK are more stable.

This slide from a working paper co-authored by Dr. Marin Bozic and Blimling and Associates was discussed at the PA Dairy Summit. Dairy farmer Nelson Troutman noticed the fluid milk consumption graph showed the UK (lighter blue line under gray line) doing much better in per-capita fluid milk trends the past 15 years compared with the U.S. (red line), and he asked about it. Australia (gray line) is also doing better.

Referencing Bozic’s graph showing fluid milk consumption trends for various countries, Berks County dairy farmer Nelson Troutman asked about the notably different trend in the UK compared with the U.S.

“Why is their fluid milk not going down like here?” Troutman asked. “Over there, they talk about ‘the blue milk’ (a reference to the package color of whole milk in the UK). Is it because their whole milk is higher fat than ours? They don’t take it down to 3.25%, and I think their schools can still serve it. It’s no wonder fluid milk sales are falling here.”

Bozic responded to say he thinks “it’s atrocious that we make school kids drink milk without fat,” going on to mention new technology that can convert the lactose into a dietary fiber.

“If that is successful,” said Bozic, “Then flavored milk (for schools) can be developed to have no additional calories (even with the full fat).”

In that aspect, Bozic talked about how to stimulate fluid milk brand innovation, promotion, and packaging investment in a regulated Class I pricing environment.

“We cling to the FMMO structure because we think that without it, milk pricing will be like the Wild West,” said Bozic.

“There’s some truth to that,” he acknowledged, noting that farms with fewer than 3000 cows are not sure if processors will want to work with them in the future, and the regulated pricing affords some structure for those small and mid-sized farms “to feel safe.”

In reality, however, Bozic said the Wild West is already happening, and it starts at the retail level, which then pushes losses through the system and milk all over the map.

He explained that the Class I price announcements give retailers a price in advance, and these pricing structures show them the costs of bottling, so they know how hard they can squeeze those bottlers, and they are squeezing them.

It’s within this context that Bozic put forth the idea of a fluid milk innovation premium or credit, where the Class I price could be lifted, maybe $2 per hundredweight, and processors could get this premium back — IF they innovate their brand packaging, marketing and promotion.

A key part of this concept is the cost of innovation would be within the Class I price. It would have to be earned, but would be protected from the retailer price squeeze.

“This could encourage fluid milk bottlers to do brand innovation and promotion, to invest in packaging, while making it not so easy for retailers to squeeze them to where they can’t do it,” said Bozic.

“Consumers would pay a little more for milk, but that’s fine,” he explained, citing research that shows the demand reaction to promotion is much larger than the demand reaction to price.

Outside of Pennsylvania, the 99-cent and $1.25, $1.50 gallons seen in supermarkets reflect Class I value loss that is not being borne solely by those discounting retailers. The losses are pushed back through the system, especially now that there is more cooperative ownership of Class I bottling plants, post-Dean.

Cooperatives are not required to pay Class I minimums to their milk suppliers the way that private milk buyers must.

One attendee asked about the roughly $2.50 in make allowance equivalents that are, by default, subtracted from the Class I price. Could this money be used for innovation and promotion credits since Class I bottlers are not making cheese, butter, nonfat dry milk and whey that the make allowances pertain to?

Bozic replied that the make allowances aren’t extractable because they are “embedded” in the FMMO formulas that currently determine the value of milk components.

For producers in regulated Class I areas — namely the Northeast and Southeast — Bozic said it will be important for them to “lead the way” in an open debate on how fluid milk prices can be stabilized and how the other benefits of FMMOs in payment timeliness, weights and measures, price benchmarking and such can be preserved.

When asked specifically about going back to the ‘higher of’ for calculating the Class I base price, Bozic said: “In the Northeast and Southeast, Class I is still a big deal. If you want it, and if IDFA can’t make a strong argument against it, then go for it.”

More importantly, he said: “We need to build a grand coalition. Transparency is part of that. If building a broader coalition brings us back to discussion about the ‘higher of’, then maybe that’s part of it.”

But the bigger issue he alluded to is this: Doing nothing, and letting it all just happen, could lead to Federal Orders collapsing in other parts of the country, without enough Class I to keep them together, and the system could begin to unravel, anyway, without producer input as to what functions should be saved and how to save them.

Look for part two next week on other aspects of the milk pricing discussion, and more details about what Bozic is doing on Milk Check Transparency, including how producers can participate by writing to him at marin@bozic.io

Last week’s Farmshine (Feb. 4, 2022) had a brief overview of the discussion. Check it out here

Deep discounts on All-Milk prices bring new risk management challenges

Posted on August 6, 2020 by Agmoos

NOTE: In the first part of this three-part series, we’ll look at some of the factors contributing to the huge divergence between Class III and IV at the root of current losses in milk income, especially for risk-managers who were caught off guard with no good tools to manage the misalignment and especially the de-pooling. In the next two parts, we’ll look at some of the advice for managing basis risk in CME-based tools and revenue insurance.

This graph at dairymarkets.org shows the divergence between Class III and IV milk futures at the root of deep discounts in All-Milk prices as compared with Class III.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, Friday, August 7, 2020

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Dairy producers find themselves in uncharted territory, where a mixed bag of market factors, pricing structures, class price misalignments, Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) provisions, product-in / product-out flows via imports and exports vs. inventory, as well as the government’s thumbprint on the scales in a pandemic shutdown of the economy and the dairy product purchases that followed. All have affected Class III and Class IV milk prices quite differently, creating deep discounts in blended farm milk prices vs. Class III.

“We’re seeing milk class wars,” said economist Dan Basse of AgResource Company, a domestic and international agricultural research firm located in Chicago, during a PDPW Dairy Signal webinar recently. Basse opined that the current four-class FMMO system is old and outdated with pitfalls creating new volatility issues for producers in the form of the $7 to $10 spread between Class III and Class IV in June / July.

He noted, as have others in the past, that a simpler pricing system with one manufacturing milk price and one fluid milk price is something that “dairy farmers could live within.”

Under the current four-class system, and the new way of calculating the Class I Mover via averaging, dairy farmers now find themselves “living on the edge, not knowing what the PPD (Producer Price Differential) will be,” said Basse.

“A $7.00 per hundredweight discount is a lot of capital, a lot of income and a lot of margin to lose with no way to hedge for it, no way to protect it, when the losses are not being made up at home (as reflected in) the PPD,” Basse related.

Previous Farmshine articles over the past few weeks have explained some of the FMMO factors reflected in the negative PPDs everyone is focused on because they are so large. While June’s PPD was primarily affected by lag-time, the next several months of negative PPDs are likely to occur based on the legislated change to the Class I Mover calculation in the last Farm Bill.

The significance of the PPD is that it indicates to the producer the value of the milk in FMMO-available pool dollars as compared to the announced Class III price. The PPD is how the FMMO pool revenue is balanced.

Normally, component values are paid by class, and the extra is divided by hundredweights in the pool to calculate a PPD reflected as the difference (usually positive) between the FMMO uniform price and the Class III price, according to Dr. Mark Stephenson, University of Wisconsin dairy economist in a recent PDPW Dairy Signal.

When higher-value Class III milk is de-pooled in this scenario, the dollars don’t stretch, so the pool has to be balanced by dividing the loss (negative PPD). Even in the southern FMMOs based on fat/skim the same shortfall occurs and shows up as milk being worth less than Class III, instead of more.

The problem faced right now is the Class III price does not represent the broader industry, and there are no straightforward tools for managing this type of risk, especially when the higher-value Class III milk is de-pooled or replaced with a lower class.

“It’s a terrible situation on the hedging side, with three material sources of the problem,” notes Bill Curley of Blimling and Associates in a Farmshine interview this week.

While he describes ways to manage some of these sources in building a risk management price or margin, such as using a mix of Class III and IV and other strategies that reflect a producer’s milk market blend of classes, “there’s no hedge for de-pooling,” he relates.

In fact, Stephenson illustrates this for the Upper Midwest FMMO 30, showing a difference of $7 between the level of negative PPD for July without de-pooling and the level of negative PPD with de-pooling.

While July de-pooling figures won’t be known until mid-August, the June de-pooling in the Northeast wasn’t as bad as in California, as an example. In California, so much milk is already sold outside the pool, that it is easy to replace virtually all of the Class III milk with lower-value Class IV in this divergent classified price scenario.

In the Upper Midwest, only so much de-pooling can occur due to qualifying criteria, so utilization that may normally be 75% Class III, was 50% in June. They don’t have enough Class IV to simply replace Class III and stay qualified on the Order.

Curley and others explain that this situation could leave producers unprotected, especially since they can’t control any of the sources of misalignment between their All-Milk price and Class III. The only factor they can control is whether or not to drop the hedges, which then leaves them unprotected for market risk at a volatile time in the midst of a pandemic as virus rates are reportedly re-surging.

Meanwhile, this week began with risk working its way back into markets as three consecutive days of steep losses in CME cheese and butter prices pushed both Class III and IV milk futures lower, but still with a $4 to $7 gap between them in the next few months.

For its part in balancing broader industry demand, USDA announced a third round of food box purchases for September and October, which will again include cheese, but this time will include more from Class II (sour cream, yogurt, cream cheese) as well as some butter from Class IV. All told, the government will have spent about $1 billion in three phases of dairy purchases for the Farmers to Families Food Box program.

Stephenson reminds producers of the silver lining in this cloud.

“Remember what the pandemic economy looked like just a little over two months ago,” he said. “It was absolutely devastating. Cheese was at $1.00/lb, and milk dumping was unprecedented.

“Now, as we look at things, it’s going to be better than we expected then,” he said showing the All-Milk price for 2020 is now forecast to come in at just under $18 for the year, but that many farms will net $20 per hundredweight for the year via the combination of Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) and Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) payments.

He estimates 2020 DMC payments at the $9.50 coverage level should net 66 cents across annual production for the year while CFAP payments have produced, so far, an impact equal to $1.55 per hundredweight across annual production.

For many producers, however, it won’t feel like $20. It might not even feel like $18.

USDA NASS reported June All-Milk prices last Friday, July 31. The range from high to low is $8, nearly double the normal range. At $18.10, the U.S. average All-Milk price did push the Dairy Margin Coverage milk margin above the highest payout level at $9.99.

Take June milk checks for example. USDA announced Friday, July 31 that the June U.S. All-Milk price was $18.10. That’s almost $3 below the Class III price of $21.04 for June, something we just don’t see.

Worse, USDA’s own report showed an $8.00 per hundredweight spread between the lowest All-Milk price reported at $14.80 for Michigan and the highest reported at $22.70 for South Dakota. This unprecedented spread is almost double the normal range from top to bottom. (Table 1)

Also unprecedented is the Pennsylvania All-Milk price reported by USDA for June at $16.30. That’s a whopping $1.80 below the U.S. All-Milk price when normally the state’s All-Milk price is 30 to 60 cents above the U.S. average.

The same thing can be said for Southeast fluid markets and other regions where a mixed products, classes and de-pooling of higher-value milk left coffers lacking for producer payment in the pool, and results varied in how co-ops and handlers compensated producers outside the pool.

Dairy producers participating in the June milk check survey announced in Farmshine a few weeks ago, have reported gross pay prices that averaged fully $2 below the respective USDA All-Milk prices calculated for their state or region. Net prices, after deductions, averaged $4 below, and the same wide $8 spread from top to bottom averages was seen in this data from over 150 producers across six of the 11 Federal Orders. (Table 2)

This all creates an additional wrinkle in terms of the impact on the DMC margin, which was announced this week at $9.99 for June – 49 cents over the highest coverage level of $9.50 in the DMC program. This margin does not reflect anything close to reality on most farms in June and potentially July.

Large, unexpected and unprotected revenue gap

Normally the All Milk price is higher than Class III, and the cost of managing risk when the market moves higher is then covered by the performance of the cash price, or milk check, instead of the hedge, forward contract or revenue insurance. The inverse relationship in June and July between blend prices and Class III price, left a large, unexpected and unprotected revenue gap.

For its part, USDA AMS Dairy Programs defines the All Milk price in an email response recently as “a measurement of what plants paid the non-members and cooperatives for milk delivered to the plant before deduction for hauling, and this includes quality, quantity and other premiums and is at test. The NASS price should include the amount paid for the ‘not pooled milk.’”

USDA’s response to our query further confirmed that, “The Class III money still exists in the marketplace. It is just that manufacturing handlers are not required to share that money through the regulated pool.”

By the looks of the milk check data from many areas (Table 2), most of this value was not shared back to producers, with a few notable exceptions. However, economists project the situation for July milk will be worse in this regard.

The factors depressing June and July FMMO uniform prices, USDA All-Milk prices and producer mailbox milk check prices are three-fold: the 6 to 8-week lag-time in advance-pricing of the Class I Mover, the new method of averaging to calculate the Class I Mover, and de-pooling of the higher-value Class III milk. All three factors are rooted in the $7 to $10 divergence between Class III and IV in June and July.

The part of the equation attributed to the new Class I Mover calculation is perhaps most discouraging because this is not money producers will eventually see. On the other hand, the lost value from the advance-pricing lag-time is eventually “caught up” in future milk checks. Most of the discount to come in July farm-level prices and negative PPDs in future months vs. Class III will be from the divergent factors that are not reconciled later.

Demand drivers differ for Class III vs. IV

Driving Class III $7 to $10 above Class IV was the abrupt turnaround in the cheese market, fed by strong retail demand, the resupply of foodservice channels, a significant May rebound in exports of cheese and whey, significant declines in cheese imports in the March through June period, and new government purchases of cheese for immediate distribution under CFAP.

On the flipside, Class IV value weakened at the same time as butter and powder did not have as many competing demand drivers. Additionally, butter stocks were overhanging the market, despite butter being the dairy product that saw the very highest increase in retail demand during the March through June Coronavirus shutdown period with retail butter sales up 46% over year ago.

Butter and powder production in the U.S. are mainly through co-op owned and managed facilities, while cheese production is a mix of co-op, private and mixed plant ownership.

When co-ops petitioned USDA for a temporary Class I floor hearing, most of the pushback came from the Midwest, and there were calls instead for government direct payments and cheese purchases for distribution to bring down what had been a growing cheese inventory. A stabilizer, or “snubber” on the Class I Mover calculation would have helped avoid much of this unrecouped discount on All-Milk price compared with Class III that affected most of the country.

While cheese moved to retail, foodservice, government purchases and export, butter was mainly relying on the surge in retail sales. Butter and milk powder were not draws in government CFAP purchases.

Overall, however, CFAP has not been the biggest driver in the cheese rally, according to Stephenson, although it added another demand driver to the Class III mix.

He notes that while the government CFAP purchases included a lot of cheese, those purchases accounted for 10% of the cheese price rally in June and July. The rest was fueled by retail demand staying strong and restaurants reopening and refilling supply chains, along with strong demand for other dairy products at retail, such as fluid milk. Producers were also pulling back to avoid overbase penalties. These factors combined to reduce cheese production in May and June, while demand drivers reduced inventory vs. demand.

Other dairy products also saw higher retail demand and were included to some degree in the USDA’s CFAP purchases, but without the same level of visible pull for the trade.

Import/export and inventory equation differs for Class III vs. IV

In taking a closer look at imports and exports relative to inventory to gauge differences between the product mix for Class III vs. Class IV, there are some key differences on both sides of that equation.

Exports of cheese in May were up 8%, and whey exports up 16% over year ago, according to U.S. Dairy Export Council.

Meanwhile butter and butterfat exports were down 7% in May, and down 21% below year ago year-to-date.

Powder exports did break records up 24% for May on skim milk powder. Whole milk powder exports were up 83% in May and 44% year-to-date.

On the import side of the equation, cheese imports were down 13% in the March through June period vs. year ago, according to USDA’s Dairy Import License Circular.

Non-cheese imports, on the other hand, were up 37% above year ago at the same time.

One factor hanging over Class IV markets is the butter inventory — up 11% over year ago — despite significant draw-down month-to-month and retail sales volume being almost 50% higher than a year ago throughout the Covid period.

While U.S. dairy imports are dwarfed in volume by U.S. exports, overall, it is notable that the 37% increase in non-cheese imports included 17% more butter and butter substitute imported compared with a year ago during the March through June period and up 28% year-to-date. Furthermore, whole milk powder imports were up by 25% in the March through June period.

Looking ahead

In a dairy market outlook recently, both Stephenson and professor emeritus Bob Cropp said these wide swings that are creating deep discounts are expected to begin moving toward more normal pricing relationships after August, with Class III and IV prices both forecast to be in the $16s by the end of the year, and in the $16s and $17s for 2021.

Already this week, CME cheese has slipped below the $2 mark, pushing August Class III futures under the $20 mark and September into the mid-to-high $16s. Spot butter tumbled to $1.50/lb, pushing Class IV futures down into the low $13s — keeping the divergence between Class III and IV in place.

Experts encourage producers to be thinking more holistically about the milk markets in planning risk management and not to look at Class III as the leading indicator of which direction the market will take.

This makes any discussion of “margin” based on a Class III milk price irrelevant to the reality under the present conditions. In short, risk management tools did what they were designed to do, but new challenges on the cash price, or milk check side, will change how producers implement and use these tools, or blends of tools, in the future.

“Class III might be a wonderful market for cheese, but it’s not reflecting the entire dairy industry. Risk managers are losing margin on contracts that were meant to protect them from market risk,” says Basse.

“We normally trade at an All-Milk premium to the CME Class III. Today, that has changed dramatically,” he adds. “We are at a significant discount to the CME. We just don’t see these discounts relative to the CME. It is unprecedented.”

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Global dairy thoughts Part 5: First half 2018 butter, milk, cream imports climbed!

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Agmoos

Timelines show how domestic dietary guidelines, Obama/Vilsack school milk rules and ramped up low-fat and fat-free dairy promotion through GENYOUth and FUTP60 all laid the groundwork for declining Class I fluid milk sales to pave the way for flat pricing and increased exports (now coincidentally under the industry leadership of former Sec Vilsack). Then consumers learned the truth and began coming back to whole milk and butter and full-fat cheeses even while the government turns a deaf ear in regards to the rules about feeding our schoolchildren. So what did U.S. companies and cooperatives do to keep that milk price flat enough for the export market this year? They imported more butter, milk and cream in first half 2018!

By Sherry Bunting, originally published in Farmshine, September 7, 2018

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Let’s take a look at the overall global dairy trade balance of the U.S.

In gross numbers, the balance is positive, showing the U.S. is winning new market share on the side of exports over imports. But this tells only part of the story, ignoring the potential milk market impacts of substantial increases in imports of milkfat at this critical time during the first six months of 2018.

In June 2018, Global Dairy Thoughts Part 3 and Part 4 covered some of the Federal Order pricing impacts of rapidly expanding exports alongside a diminishing Class I utilization. While per-capita milk consumption has steadily declined since 1980, the total packaged milk sales held their own due to population growth.

That is, until we hit 2009-10, when the third and fourth layers (see Chart 1 above) were added to the lowfat-push — that consequently pulled total fluid milk sales into the bucket at the same time that exports began their rapid ascent.

Expanding export utilization hits Class I utilization with a double-whammy: Smaller piece in a bigger pie, even if consumption losses are stabilized. We’ll revisit that in a future part of this series on dairy policy and logistics.

In looking at imports and doing trend comparisons for farm milk prices, fluid milk sales, total exports, total imports and the large increase so far this year in imports of butter and butteroil as well as steady increases in imports of milk and cream (condensed, non-condensed, liquid, powder, sweetened, unsweetened), there are some correlations. (Chart 2 below)

From 2005 forward, the national average all-milk price moved in patterns concave to the corresponding imports of butter/butteroil and milk/cream on the timeline. While the totals are not huge, we all know what “a little more” can mean on the supply side when it comes to milk prices.

In the first-half of 2018, for example, the U.S. imported 12% more butter and butteroil and 11% more condensed milk and cream, according to the European Commission’s Milk Market Observatory published August 14, 2018. (Charts 3 and 4 below)

While the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) reports that first half 2018 dairy exports of milk powders, cheese, butterfat, whey and lactose topped 1.14 mil. tons to set a new record-high – up 20% from year ago, some interesting things were also happening on the import side.

Even though the USDEC data dashboard continues to show total imports accounting for a flat line at 4% or less of the milk supply on a solids basis, while exports accounted for 16.8% in the first six months of 2018, there are some interesting aspects of the import picture related to ‘what’ and ‘when’.

According to the August 14 EC statistical report ranking top-10 importers and exporters of various dairy commodities, the U.S. ranked third in butter and butteroil imports, up 12% from year ago and not far behind China (1) and Russia (2) during the first half of 2018.

The U.S. also ranked fourth in imports of condensed milk and cream – up 11% compared with a year ago.

When butter substitutes, containing over 45% butterfat, are included in the butter and butteroil import total, as documented at the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) import monitoring website, the U.S. butter/butteroil total rises by more than 200% during the past three quarters (Sept. 2017 through June 2018) compared with the same nine months a year ago.

While half of the butter and butteroil imports came to the U.S. from EU countries, a majority of the other half came from Mexico, according to the USITC website listings under various Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HTS) codes.

In the condensed milk and cream category, 8% of U.S. imports came from the EU, according to the EC report.

Sifting through the tedious lists and multiple codes and combinations at the USITC website, it appears the U.S. imported quite a bit of condensed milk and cream from Mexico, a little from Canada (though less from Canada than a year ago), and the remainder from sources scattered around the globe — even China.

For the past nine months, Sept. 2017 through June 2018, the condensed milk and cream, unsweetened, category of imports was up 44% in powder or granular form compared with the same period a year ago, while milk and cream imports, unconcentrated, unsweetened, and still in liquid form, were up 22%.

Imports of sweetened condensed milk and cream were up 7% and mainly from Mexico.

Of course, the U.S. remains the top importer of casein and caseinates, even though those imports were down 15% from a year ago during the first half of 2018, according the EC report.

Doing the math on milk protein concentrate (MPC) imports for the nine months from September 2017 through June 2018 listed at the USITC site, MPC imports in both the 0404 and 3500 HTS codes, combined, were down 1.3% compared with the same period a year earlier.

On the other hand, imports of milk protein isolates (MPI) were up 31% from Sept. 2017 through June 2018 compared with the same three quarters a year ago.

Looking further into other categories, imports of “textured protein substance, including dairy” were up 40% for the past nine months compared with a year ago.

In the significant dairy-containing “food prep” categories — including infant formula and having various percentages of milk solids and butterfat — imports were up 7% during the past nine months compared with a year ago. In this particular category, including confectionary products containing significant milk solids, Canada was a primary source, along with EU countries as well as some of these imports coming from Chile and other South American countries.

Process cheese product imports were up 46% during the past nine months compared with a year earlier.

While U.S. imports of ice cream were down relative to year ago, the total when combined with import categories in other HTS codes for “edible ice containing dairy” tallied an import total that was up collectively by more than 200% over year ago during the past nine months.

To read Parts 1 through 4, click these links: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

And stay tuned for this series to continue as 2019 trends develop abroad and on the homefront.

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Global thoughts Part 4: As exports grow, who benefits from ‘new math’?

Posted on January 7, 2019 by Agmoos

By Sherry Bunting, originally published in Farmshine, June 7, 2018 and examines the utilization of domestic Class I fluid milk vs. exported commodities during the worst three months of pricing at the beginning of 2018, but the trends show how FMMO pricing no longer provides the value to farmers for their milk as exports increase. Read Global Thoughts Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — U.S. dairy exports posted record-high 2018 first-quarter volumes (see Chart 1), representing 17.3% of U.S. milk utilization on a milk equivalent basis, according to the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC). (Note, the average Jan. through Oct. was 16.3%, still a record high.)

This, against the backdrop of Class I milk utilization falling to 29% of Federal Order pooled milk but just 18.9% of total milk production in the first quarter of 2018 (Chart 2).

In fact, Federal Order pool reports for first quarter 2018 showed Northeast marketings 1.8% below year ago as pool receipts fell due to reduced production. At the same time, other FMMO pools recorded declines in pool receipts, which USDA confirmed by email were largely due to shifts in pooling or strategic despoiling to prop up Class I utilization percentages. (For example the pooled first quarter receipts in the Appalachian Order were up 6% while down 5.5% in the adjacent Mideast Order.)

The total “official” U.S. Class I utilization for 2017 was 26.1%, down nearly 10% from 35.9% in 2009, according to USDA figures.

However, the Northeast Market Administrator’s most recent bulletin (April) observed that the real percentage of total U.S. milk production used for Class I fluid sales in 2017 was just 22.3%!

Bob Younkers, chief economist for the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA), analyzed fluid milk trends, reporting in February that the 2017 fluid milk losses, alone, represented 20 million fewer pounds (2.3 million fewer gallons) of milk sold daily – nationwide – in 2017 vs. 2016. In addition to the blow dealt to producer milk checks, Younkers points to how the fixed costs of bottling increase when spread across fewer gallons of milk sold.

Coming into 2018, not only have first quarter Class I sales declined 1.5% compared with first quarter 2017, the Class I utilization percentage fell by even more — down 2.5% below year ago — in part because exports grew to this new first quarter record of 17.3%.

Left unchecked, the current math trend shows that as U.S. exports reach the goal of 20% set by the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), the percentage of milk utilized in export sales will very soon equal and surpass Class I utilization as a percent of total milk production.

Who benefits from this new math?

If the current classified pricing system — and its Class I regulation — must continue, perhaps the growing export utilization should have its own class formula tied directly to export pricing and representing growth milk in the U.S. system so that the other 80% of milk pricing can be more stable and reflective of serving that large anchor-base of domestic consumption?

Survey the experts on this idea and they’ll tell you an export class for U.S. milk pricing is a non-starter because of trade agreements and WTO. But trade agreements are being renegotiated and others in the global markets have mechanisms in play.

Perhaps instead of going after Canada’s export class implemented because of expanded production due to higher consumer demand for fat, the U.S. could learn from what’s being done north of the border with this pricing mechanism to match exports prices and products to growth milk that goes into products strictly for export?

This is not an idea that goes against free trade, but one that recognizes the U.S. as a free-trader in need of fair trade leverage for producer pricing.

The U.S. must be competitive enough to have its products arrive at other ports, so that it can remain competitive enough to keep other products from arriving at its ports — where a large market for dairy already exists. In Part Three, we looked at some of the product differences.

But there’s another catch to this romance with export markets. They can be unstable and unpredictable, and while we make more of the globally significant products today than in 2008, our product mix and flexibilities are different than other successful exporting nations.

Would an export class allow pricing of growth milk — a percentage of the nation’s production or a percentage of production in high growth areas — to be aligned to the fluctuating global markets for globally-significant products with a margin to attract necessary investments in manufacturing flexibility and innovation? Such alignment could, at the same time, allow a more stable and profitable base price for milk going into dairy products for domestic consumption?

After all, we are increasing exports to levels that are approaching the falling Class I utilization percentages and yet NONE of the globally-significant products and/or prices are even used in the arbitrary U.S. Federal Order pricing formulas, to which location differentials are added to ensure the Class I price is always higher (more on this when we tackle logistics in a future part of this series).

As dairy exports become the new epicenter of U.S. marketing, a different light is cast on these regulatory pricing structures.

Let’s look at the differences between global and domestic pricing and trading platforms.

For starters, price announcements to dairy producers in New Zealand are based on the actual value of global sales with producers buying shares of processing capacity for the quantity of milk they expect to produce. As milk falls short or exceeds those pegs, payout announcements are adjusted based on the relationship of the production to the sales.

In Europe, producers also see milk prices that reflect the value of what is sold not a formula like in the U.S. that leaves key products, prices and markets out of the math equation.

While Europe’s quota system has ended, the EU commission intervenes with purchases. Processors more nimbly shift between products to adapt to market changes. And if they miss in their projections — as they did in the shift to making more powder when the Russians stopped buying cheese and butter due to the economic sanctions — the EU commission intervened to buy and stockpile that powder to a degree that still is blamed for suppressing the global market for powder and holding back the U.S. milk price recovery.

In addition to differences in pricing, there are big differences between global and U.S. price discovery and trading platforms.

While the CME daily spot market in Chicago went electronic last year, the Global Dairy Trade (GDT) biweekly internet auction has always been an electronic platform.

The GDT engages more buyers and sellers, offers contract sales that are near-term and forward-looking to create what is essentially a 2-month ‘spot’ price, according to Bialkowski and Koeman’s November 2017 study at the University of Canterbury New Zealand of spot market design in relation to the success of futures markets.

They explain the GDT biweekly auction is a vehicle for Fonterra to market 30% of its production and to provide a global exchange for other sellers like Dairy Foods of the U.S. and Arla of Sweden.

The GDT auction includes many products and ingredients — from bulk cheese and butter to whole milk powder, skim milk powder, anhydrous milkfat powder, buttermilk powder, lactose powder, milk protein concentrate, rennet casein and occasionally sweet whey powder. Whey protein concentrate is another globally-significant product, which the U.S. makes and exports a lot of – but that price is never considered in the FMMO classified pricing scheme either.

By contrast, the CME futures markets provide a hedging opportunity for Class III and IV milk and futures markets for the four Federal Order pricing commodities: Cheddar, butter, nonfat dry milk and dry whey. The CME also operates a daily cash “spot” market primarily for three of the four Federal Order commodities – butter, Cheddar and nonfat dry milk.

The CME trades only those specific Federal Order commodities. It is thinly traded with few buyers and sellers, although volume has increased 1 to 3% in the past year since the change to an electronic trading platform.

As a spot market for hedging, Bialkowski’s analysis described the CME cash market as one that is less well-designed because daily ‘spot’ prices are market-clearing and used retroactively in government pricing formulas, with a pricing delay built in, while GDT auction contracts offer pricing points for delivery one to four months forward.

The biweekly GDT prices are always based on actual sales because all product offered is sold. And those sales are weighted to calculate a weighted average for each product as well as an overall weighted performance index for the dairy trade.

The CME spot market, on the other hand, pegs its daily spot prices on the activity occurring in the final moments of its 15-minute daily trading session.

As we saw on a few occasions earlier this year, a CME trading session had multiple loads change hands at specific prices, but the daily spot price was determined by a lower last-minute offer.

Access to the market is also different. CME traders must simply have product to sell and meet payment and delivery terms to buy. The GDT, on the other hand, has a more controlled process where buyers and sellers are vetted and approved by Fonterra of New Zealand because they run the platform.

How will the U.S. dairy industry adapt to competitively manage export growth and volatility? Are changes needed in the mix of commodity pricing and milk utilization formulas that govern the regulatory pricing structures?

If industry leaders want to focus on export market growth and bring home the message that dairy farmers must accept lower prices “because we are in a global market,” then why is the government involved in regulating prices on the shrinking piece of the expanding pie (Class I) and calculating component value from just four commodities while ignoring the globally significant products and their mostly higher prices?

This is new math and it is not adding up.

A national hearing with report to Congress would help examine new thinking and take a closer look at current regulatory pricing schemes. How is price regulation affecting milk movement and location? Do these schemes return enough component value to the farms? Are the arbitrary make allowances creating winners and losers? Would truly free market forces do a better job? Or if classified pricing is here to stay, should we be aligning milk growth in the U.S. with export market growth and price it accordingly?

In Part Five, we’ll look at U.S. dairy imports and why volume is not the only important factor.

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Eastern dairy industry has value-add soul-searching to do

Posted on January 1, 2019 by Agmoos

Talking candidly about dairy markets and trade were market experts (l-r) Tom Wegner, Land O’Lakes economist; Tom Roosevelt, founder and owner of West Chester-based Roosevelt Dairy Trade, Inc; and Matt Gould, owner of Philadelphia-based Dairy & Foods Market Analyst, LLC. Photos by Sherry Bunting

By Sherry Bunting, published previously in Farmshine, November 30, 2018

BAINBRIDGE, Pa. – “There is a long list of demands coming from consumers with unprecedented opportunities for milk,” said Matt Gould, owner of Dairy & Food Market Analyst LLC, based in Philadelphia. “Consumer demands are the key, and they are willing to pay for them.”

That was the good news. Gould said that Pennsylvania has an image to capitalize on, and part of that image is family farms working close to the land and animals — the iconic Lancaster County Amish-made image — for example.

But by the end of the forum, it was clear that how the state of Pennsylvania — and the eastern states in general — can tap into value-added dairy opportunities will require both individual and collective soul-searching.

The not-so-good news was the main substance of three hours with three dairy market experts at the annual Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania (PDMP) Fall Issues Forum on November 14 at the Bainbridge Fire Hall in Lancaster County.

Each expert, in their own way, painted a changing and sobering portrait of the dairy market landscape. Producers in Pennsylvania, and the eastern U.S. in general, are not located where commodity processing growth is occurring to serve rapid growth for export and foodservice markets, but instead, exist in a market where declining fluid milk consumption is dictating the terms and leaving mainly the option of slow growth consumer niche markets that take time to develop and must be “continually fed.”

The experts noted that even though the Northeast is down to 30% Class I utilization, 87% of fluid milk sales is water that is expensive to ship, so, in a sense, the albatross around the neck of eastern dairy farmers is the fluid milk market needing farms nearby consumers, but at the same time declines in fluid milk sales are pressuring those farms.

In fact, the experts characterized the East as mainly a fluid and specialty market for dairy. Not the news many wanted to hear since a recent Pennsylvania Dairy Study suggested the Keystone State is a good location for a new cheese plant, and the Port of Philadelphia was tagged in the study as a vehicle to potentially capitalize on export growth markets.

Tom Roosevelt, founder of Roosevelt Dairy Trade, Inc., West Chester, said that commodity processing expansion is mainly associated with export growth and that is all being centered on the West and Midwest.

“A new cheese plant is not my first thought for Pennsylvania,” he said bluntly.

In fact, all three panelists agreed that the Keystone State’s hope is in building niche markets, and they offered these strategies: 1) branding the state’s image, 2) improving milk components, 3) marketing to consumers who have an emotional connection to where their food comes from and how it is produced, and 4) altering production practices — such as Organic, non-GMO and animal welfare labeling — to meet those niche demands.

They also preached the need for greater efficiency and market discipline, that producers here will increasingly see base/excess programs and will need to be using risk management tools and futures markets to get a ‘flat’ price because a ‘flat’ price is where the industry is headed in the midst of volatile global trade factors.

All three experts indicated that the deepening national and global dairy crisis won’t get better any time soon, and that Pennsylvania has some additional long-term challenges if it wants to retain and grow dairy.

Billed as a session to take dairy markets and trade ‘beyond the spin,’ the forum discussion was brutally honest. While disheartening, the information about what is happening here in the context of what is happening elsewhere is important for constructive ongoing discussions in Pennsylvania and other eastern states about the future of their dairy farms that are key to agriculture infrastructure and state and local economies.

When asked about the potential to change how milk is priced, Roosevelt said that there is no question the CME is thinly traded, but that electronic trading has brought in more activity. He said the USDA National Dairy Product Sales Report that provides the product prices for milk pricing formulas, is outdated.

He and Gould agreed that substantial changes to Federal Order milk pricing are not likely to happen because the investments of large companies (think Walmart, Leprino, etc.) rely on a “stable regulatory environment to protect their investments.”

Adding value

Gould challenged Pennsylvania’s dairy industry to instead focus on “value-added” processing and marketing instead of focusing on making more milk.

Tom Wegner, economist with Land O’Lakes said that, “Three years of tough markets would seem to be due for a price peak, but I don’t want to give any notion that it will get better soon. That is the impact of long milk. We are long on milk, and that will probably continue for a while.

Tom Wegner, economist with Land O’Lakes, shows global milk production patterns during the PDMP forum on dairy markets.

“Your production of components here is more important to enhance milk checks than anything else,” Wegner said.

Roosevelt was particularly candid: “It’s tough to look at this part of the country and think you’ll have dairy exports. The real benefit you have here is in value-added.”

He gave the example of conventional nonfat dry milk selling for 85 cents a pound when organic powder is over $4.00/lb. (The flip-side of this proposition is the very high feed costs and other costs for organic production in which consolidation is also happening, so those producers also are having tough times.)

“It is hard for you to compete on a commodity level,” said Roosevelt from his experience trading dairy commodities at a ratio of 60% domestic use, including animal and pet feed makers, and 40% exports, noting the export trade really began in the past eight years.

“We do a lot of business with Land O’Lakes and Maryland-Virginia,” he said, “but we don’t move hardly anything into export markets out of the Northeast. The fluid market dictates things here in the East compared with the West and Midwest, where cheese is king.”

Roosevelt said the Midwest, Southwest and West are where dairy plants are doing line extensions, and new plants are being planned and breaking ground.

Global volatility

“These companies and cooperatives are going after the commodity big-volume markets to China and Mexico,” said Roosevelt. “If tariffs take those markets out, then it will affect you here because that milk moves down the line. When those markets move product out of the U.S., that means less competition for you here.”

The export markets are deemed the growth markets, said the experts, because domestic demand is declining in some sectors and offers only slow-growth opportunities in other sectors.

With the growth-focused U.S. dairy industry fueled mainly by exports, the volatility of the global market has forced more of the industry to use the CME futures markets to get the ‘flat price’ they want in their quarterly contracts, according to Roosevelt.

“As traders, we trade off the market price and use the futures to convert that to a flat price,” he said. “I would urge you to look at the futures to get a flat price. It’s a tool that will be increasingly important to all of you because, whether we like it or not, we are in a global market and futures are a way to reduce that volatility.”

Roosevelt’s bottom line was for producers to be as efficient as they can and look for the market that “gives you the value, whether it’s artisan or organic.”

Wegner echoed the advice on being efficient. He said the largest farms have the advantage of stretching their economies of scale and taking a longer view in this long period of long milk.

He gave a history of Land O’Lakes with its butter production dating back to 1921 and the eventual merger with Midatlantic here in the East.

“We aggregate demand also,” he said, a nod to Land O’Lakes’ Purina. “We want more of our members to buy more of our products, not just sell us milk.”

Explaining Land O’Lakes’ market-back philosophy, Wegner said the cooperative has put tools together that include traceability and are trying to put production discipline tools into that mix.

“We come to our customers with a farm-to-fork approach and send that back through milk production for an end-to-end view,” said Wegner. “Being farmer-owned is a great part of our background as we continue to grow markets.”

While Pennsylvania’s average herd size is 90 cows, most of the producers attending the forum represented farms with 300 to 1200 cows. Some of the questions lingering in their minds were: How many niches does a dairy market have? And what will it take to develop those in-roads to cover more milk and spread those opportunities beyond the small farm-store label at the end of the drive?

While niche-marketing connects producers and their location and practices with consumers who develop that emotional tie, Roosevelt said the dairy commodity supply-chain has been developing its own sets of practices and programs.

Supply-chain realities

“Traceability is a huge part of our business, and it is as important on the feed side as the food side working with customers like Cargill and ADM,” he explained, noting the huge increase in paperwork following every product delivery. Not only are there certified analyses, date processed, how processed and lot numbers, but in the case of whey, the buyer wants to know what type of cheese process produced the whey because each one has its own profile. He gave the example of whey from Swiss cheese being whiter and higher in protein.

He noted they are getting questions about organic and non-GMO whey, which will produce even more paperwork, and that the traceability aspect is moving back the supply chain to the farm level.

Wegner also talked about traceability. While he didn’t mention it specifically, both Land O’Lakes and DFA are trialing block-chain technology to follow product digitally through the supply chain. Walmart is driving full traceability and moving toward block-chain technology.

“Walmart is one of our biggest customers for butter,” said Wegner. “Just think of the traceability challenges of mixed loads with hundreds of producers.”

The National Milk Producers Federation FARM program was described as a way of consolidating groups of producers into blocks that are being evaluated to use approved practices.

“Members want to know ‘what’s in it for me?’’ said Wegner, “but the reality is that the FARM program contains a lot of the things we have to do to be part of the market.”

Not only are domestic commodity dairy sales being driven by large fast food chains that want to be sure a farm-level animal welfare issue, for example, doesn’t damage their name, the export markets have this concern as well where brands are involved.

Wegner noted that Pizza Hut is launching a new restaurant every 18 hours, globally, and the Yum brand, which includes Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, are opening new restaurants every 8 hours across the globe. He said that 80% of the menu items at these restaurants include dairy. They secure cheese from the U.S. and are concerned about capacity and traceability over the next three years.

For example, Leprino has 80% of the market share for U.S.-produced mozzarella, said Wegner, and their growth is more concentrated in states like Michigan, Colorado, New Mexico and California.

Trickle-down effect

With the commodity production for export and large chain foodservice sectors growing — and served mainly by the Midwest and West — Roosevelt maintained that this export growth is still very important to the East because “the benefit trickles down from the West.”

He said that, “The value of growing exports, for you, is that you will have less competition coming from the Midwest and West.”

What can alter that picture — overnight — is the impact of trade tariffs and trade wars with the top three countries for off-shore dairy trade, in order: Mexico, Canada and China.

He said the tariffs have had an incredible effect on lactose trade. Those customers can go to Europe. “There’s plenty of lactose in Europe and they are quick to fill the gap with a lower price,” said Roosevelt.

Another big trade item is permeate, which is 70 to 80% lactose with some protein left in. There are fewer global competitors in this market, but when the tariffs hit, product was “in the water” and fourth quarter contracts were being negotiated, resulting in buyers and sellers splitting the extra costs and new contract offers coming in on lower bids.

The bottom line on these two commodities, according to Roosevelt, is less market for U.S. lactose and a lower price on U.S. permeate.

As for nonfat dry milk powder, it goes all over, but primarily to Mexico, Canada and China, in that order. The “new NAFTA” and the trade war with China, combined, can have an impact on all three export destinations for nonfat dry milk.

Mainly, Roosevelt’s point was that trade uncertainty can create changes “overnight” that affect dairy, and that tariffs are bad for agriculture, in general, because they “create inefficiencies that stop the normal market dynamics from taking effect.”

Like every other economist at every other meeting, Wegner talked about how Europe “really put on milk” when the quotas were removed. He admitted that he was among those who didn’t believe it would happen. But it did. And this extra milk, said Wegner, resulted in stockpiled powder that drove prices down globally.

With some intervention and drought conditions affecting Europe, the EU’s growth this year was only 1.4% instead of 2.5%. But a 1.4% growth in Europe represents far more milk than the same percentage of increase in the U.S.

Growth challenges

Wegner explained that the U.S. is growing milk production at roughly 1% per year now, but that equates to 2 billion additional pounds of milk annually. At the same time 600 million fewer pounds are going into bottles for Class I sales.

“That is what is challenging our system,” he said. “We are seeing the cows come out of the system, but better cows are going back in. For things to get better, a lot more cows need to come out.”

With Land O’Lakes having a national footprint, Wegner observed the challenges of more milk coming on in some of the largest herds in the nation. While California is not growing year-on-year, Texas and the Southwest states are growing rapidly.

He noted that even though Michigan’s growth slowed this year, “Michigan is the poster-child for the hazard of growing ahead of the market,” said Wegner. “They doubled their production from 5 billion pounds in 2000 to over 10 billion pounds by 2018, and this drove their price $2 below everyone else because their milk has to move around.”

Wegner touched on the recent Pennsylvania Dairy Study and its finding that a new cheese plant or other new processing capacity could reduce hauling costs for producers and add value to farm level milk pricing.

“New processing is easy to do, but what do you do with the additional product?” he suggested. “We take a market-back approach at Land O’Lakes because if we don’t sell it or eat it, the product gets stored.”

Wegner called cold storage cheese stocks “very high” and he said that butter stocks were “a little higher than they need to be.” (Note that the USDA cold storage report the following week showed a record-high draw-down in butter stocks that may have improved the butter storage situation.)

Wegner also said that Mexico’s retaliatory tariffs, if they remain in place until a new trade agreement is signed, are already stagnating U.S. cheese production into storage – cheese that had been going to Mexico. (Cheese exports were down 9% compared with a year ago in September.)

The bright spots, he said, are the dairy ingredient markets. “But the Class III market, right now, is a dog.”

The Class IV market is improving as Europe works through its mountain of powder, bit by bit. That powder is getting close to two years old, and Wegner observed that the U.S. is selling fresh powder at a price advantage to buyers who want fresh.

Looking at some of the specific market impacts of the trade tariffs, Wegner stressed the “woefully underestimated” tariff-mitigation payments by USDA to dairy farmers, and all three experts agreed that these tariffs, and more that will potentially kick-in January 1^st, are having very negative impacts on the U.S. dairy supply chain.

When asked how these impacts could be blamed for the lack of a price recovery when U.S. dairy exports have been record-high for January through September (most recent figures), the response was that producers should not expect higher export levels to improve farm-level prices because these export markets are largely “market-clearing” commodity markets.

PDMP executive director Alan Novak opens the discussion to questions from the 60 dairy producers and industry representatives gathering at the Bainbridge Fire Hall on November 14 for the Professional Dairy Managers of Pennsylvania’s (PDMP) Fall Issues Forum focused on dairy markets and trade.

Also driving milk production and processing west are the incentives western states provide for new plants, new dairy operations, and growth of existing businesses. For example, the I-29 corridor of the Dakotas is an area that has lots of capacity, is building more, and has dairies, like Riverview, adding cows in a big way.

Indiana and Michigan are other examples of states becoming big dairy suppliers via Select Milk Producers and Fair Oaks. Colorado’s growth is fueled by Leprino, and Texas has multiple growth influencers, including line extensions by Hilmar.

Taken together, the U.S. has grown milk production by 17 to 18 billion pounds of annual production over the past five years, according to Wegner. That’s like adding another Pennsylvania and Minnesota to the nation’s milk load. Wegner said that boils down to 50 million more pounds of milk per day moving in the U.S. compared with five years ago.

Wegner also talked briefly about Land O’Lakes’ base/excess plans. “This is our way of putting some discipline into the discussion, which goes to our market-back approach,” he said. “We moved a lot of milk from our milkshed this year, and that long milk has a cost. At the same time, he noted that Land O’Lakes has been stripping and dumping milk here, that its producers are assessed to pay for that.

“We worked with DFA (Dairy Farmers of America) and DMS (Dairy Marketing Services) on this step to do cream salvage,” he added.

Land O’Lakes’ view of investing in processing is that the products have to be able to move along the value chain in order to produce more of them.

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What will become of, us?

Posted on November 19, 2018 by Agmoos

Government’s cozy relationship with dairy lobby is problem no. 1

By Sherry Bunting, reprinted from Farmshine, October 19, 2018

These are tough times. The strain of a fourth year of flat-lined milk prices is wearing thin on dairy farmers and those who serve them.

And the folks inside the Beltway don’t get it.

Wait, maybe they do.

The Farm Bill has yet to be passed, the mid-term elections are over… and the question continues to be asked: What can be done about the fact that family dairy farms are dropping like flies?

This question has been asked and answered for the better part of three years and the whole decade before that… and still we find ourselves repeating the same words falling on the same deaf ears, pleasant nods, and ‘sincere’ handshakes.

Where does Washington go for the answers? The dairy lobby. In fact, members of Congress will say that nothing gets done without getting National Milk Producers Federation on board.

What’s the deal for the future? A better ‘welfare’ program for small farms to window-dress the rapid and deliberate consolidation that is running rough-shod over their markets and using the Federal Order and other regulated pricing mechanisms to do it.

For years, a decade or more, grassroots dairy farmers have told their legislators to please work on repairing the damage government has already done to dairy farming.

They’ve pleaded with those inside the Beltway to heed the truth on the decades of flawed dietary guidelines and to right the wrongs in our nation’s school lunch program and other institutional feeding programs that are forced to follow these flawed guidelines.

But alas, instead of real change, we get more of the same, while the dairy lobby cheers and applauds over a tiny change allowing schools to serve 1% lowfat flavored milk instead of the prior Obama-era mandate of fat-free.

Meanwhile, nothing changes for regular milk in schools. It’s been fat-free and 1% for a decade now, and we have lost a generation of milk drinkers and stand to lose even more, and all the while our school kids fight increased obesity and diabetes rates, and we wonder, why?

Heck, you can’t even sell whole milk as a fundraiser during school hours, and you can’t give it away to schoolchildren during school hours due to these dietary rules that –according to those who have done a decade of scientific investigation of the research –show are actually not healthy rules for our children in the first place.

Plus, we have the FDA, having looked the other way for more than 10 years, now talking about milk’s standard of identity within a greater framework of “modernizing” standards of identity to “accomplish nutritional goals” — goals that are guided by flawed government dietary guidelines.

Instead of acknowledging the past wrong and immediately setting it right, the FDA adds comment period after comment period to try to read the minds of consumers. They want to know if consumers understand what they are buying when they buy fake milk.

The short answer? survey after survey shows that an overwhelming majority of consumers are, in fact, confused about the nutritional differences between real milk and the imposters — some consumers even believe there is milk in the not-milk ‘milk’.

Meanwhile, more time passes. Farmers are asked to wait. Be patient, while more damage is done by counterfeit claims that steal market share from dairy milk’s rightful place.

And then there’s the regulated milk pricing. What are the odds that any member of Congress will heed the past 10 years of requests for a national hearing now that California has enthusiastically joined the Federal Orders? That was the death nell of more of the same.

“It’s a free market,” say the legislators, regulators and market pundits.

“It’s a global market,” they add further.

No folks. It is a regulated market, and believe me when I tell you, the USDA and the major national footprint cooperatives operate this regulated market in lockstep.

Processors can’t access the administrative hearing process, unless they are cooperative-owned processors.

Farmers can’t access the administrative hearing process, except through their cooperatives.

Ditto on the above when it comes to voting. Bloc voting on behalf of farmers by their cooperative leadership seals every deal.

At a meeting a few months ago in the Southeast with USDA administrators that was intended to talk about multiple component pricing, farmers brought forward their grievances about bloc voting and their concerns about how milk is qualified on their Orders to share in their pool dollars.

What was USDA’s official response? The same response we hear over and over from legislators. “You vote for your co-op boards and they vote for Federal Orders.”

The Federal Orders were implemented in the 1930’s to keep milk available to consumers, to keep producers from being run-over. Today, these Orders are used to move milk from expanding consolidation areas to regions that have small and mid-sized family and multi-generational dairy farms located near consumer populations and competitive markets.

This is not a size thing. This is not small vs. big thing. This is structural change thing that is happening in the dairy industry at an increasingly rapid rate while the lifeblood is sucked right out of our culture of dairy farming.

The storm is brewing. Since the beginning of this year, the financial experts have told us that one-third of producers are selling out or contemplating an exit from dairy, that another one-third are not sure where they even stand, and that another one-third are moving forward with plans for expansion within consolidating industry structures.

The thought occurs to me: When the other two-thirds of producers are gone, what will become of that one-third that is still moving forward expanding, undeterred? What will become of the fabric from which their progress emerged? What will become of the next generation with hands-on experience, passion and love of dairy? Who will be raised on a dairy farm in the future? What contributions will be lost when dairy becomes only a business and no longer a business that is also a lifestyle? Who will be the support businesses? How will our communities change? Will all of our dairies in the future be academically run? What will become of our cow sense, our deep roots, our sense of community?

What will become of, us?

For years we have heard “there’s a place for every size dairy in this industry.” That phrase is how we get small and mid-sized farms to advocate with consumers about modern farming so they will accept a more consolidated dairy farming picture.

Now that we are reaching this point, will we hear the large consolidating integrators say the same in reverse? Will they slow down, push pause, and realize there IS a place for the diversity of farms that make this industry the shining star it is and could be?

While at World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin in October, the strain of now a fourth year of low prices was evident. Attendance “felt” lower even if the official numbers don’t totally reflect it.

Show entries were down. Traffic among trade show exhibitors was interesting and steady, but ‘off’ and ‘different.’

Dairy farmers are struggling. Large, small, and in between, these times are tough, and clear answers are elusive.

Dairy farmers remain paralyzed by three things:

1) the inability to have an effect on their circumstances or seat at the decision table;

2) lack of understanding of an incredibly complex regulated market; and

3) the innate desire to trust the establishment that handles their milk because they are too busy milking, managing and caring for cows, not to mention the land, to handle the milk marketing themselves.

Just think about this for a moment. In the past four years, National Milk Producers Federation has created and implemented the F.A.R.M. program where someone can come in and put you on a list for a subjective heifer bedding evaluation, where more is being not asked, but demanded, while at the same time, the pay price from which to do more is declining.

The milk checkoff programs continue to focus on partnerships. All kinds of efforts emerge to give away milk and dairy, and meanwhile supermarket wars by large integrating retailers push milk further into a commodity corner from which all imposters can brand their ‘more than’ and ‘less than’ marketing claims.

What we learned at some of the seminars at World Dairy Expo is that nothing will change in the milk pricing system, that it’s a free market, a global market, and that the best Congress can do is improve the margin protection program and other insurance options so farmers have the tools to deal with it.

I’m here to tell you that as long as this remains true, no farmer should be ashamed to use these tools even if it means receiving taxpayer dollars because it is the government’s actions and inaction over a decade or more that have created the problems in milk pricing and marketing today, and furthermore, the government shows no sign of wanting to let go of its stranglehold on dietary guidelines, how it enforces dairy’s standard of identity in fraudulent labeling, nor how it conspires with the dairy lobby — made up of the nation’s largest cooperatives — to regulate pricing in a way that further consolidates the dairy industry.

And by the way, all of the rhetoric on trade and NAFTA and Canada’s supply management system and Class 7 pricing has been nothing more than a smokescreen.

Trade is important, but again, we have reached a point where 2018 is seeing the demise of dairy farms at rapid rates while exports continue to set new records. As of Oct. 5, 2018, U.S. dairy exports for the first 8 months of the year (Jan-Aug) accounted for a record-setting 16.6% of milk production on a solids basis. That’s the largest ever percentage of the largest ever milk production total – more of the more – in the history of the U.S. dairy industry’s recordkeeping.

In fact, traders will be the first to tell you that “more exports” don’t translate into “better farm milk prices” because the export markets are largely commodity clearing markets and they are fueling expansion of commodity processing in areas of the U.S. where it is easiest to export to Asia and Mexico. A global supply-chain is in the works.

The exports, in fact, are diluting the Federal Order pricing at the same rapid rate as declines in consumer fluid milk consumption, putting severe pressure on eastern markets in particular.

Meanwhile, the eastern milk markets are extremely tight on milk. This information is sourced to cooperative managers and the independent USDA Dairy Market News. Plants are seeking milk and not receiving it. Trucker shortages are complicating the problem. State regulated pricing mechanisms, such as in Pennsylvania, still interfere, making milk cheaper to bring in than to use what is here. In some Federal Orders to the south, this is also the case because of how their pools are administrated.

We are seeing the vicious circle of self-fulfilling prophecies. Producers who want to operate 50 cow, 100 cow, 300 cow, 500 cow, 1000 cow, 1500 cow dairy farms in the eastern U.S. within a day’s drive of the largest population are in jeopardy. They have lost their location advantage but continue to deal with the disadvantages. As milk tightens they are not seeing their premiums return, instead some farmers report getting docked by their co-ops for not making enough milk, or they are socked with incredible hauling rates because their milk was hauled out while other milk was hauled in.

What can Congress do? Hold that national hearing on milk pricing. Give farmers a seat at the table apart from the company-store. Learn what is happening. See government’s role in it.

Dear Congress, if you really want to know what to do, look in the mirror.

Before it’s too late, please right the fundamental wrongs government has done to our dairy consumers and dairy farmers as it controls what fat level of milk kids are permitted to drink at school, how milk is priced, how milk is marketed and how milk is allowed to be advertised and promoted with farmers’ own money – while at the same time still turning a blind eye and deaf ear to loss-leading supermarket wars that operate off the backs of farmers and the processing industry’s pillaging of milk’s market share with nondairy imposters.

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ReplyForward

In light of trade news, Canadian dairy quota, Cl. 7, tariff situation explained

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Agmoos

Should Canada make major concessions on the high tariffs on dairy imports that are part of its supply-managed dairy system? In a word: No. There is room to negotiate thresholds, but what right does the U.S. have to demand that they end a system that works for them? What right, especially as Canada has taken steps to manage how it determines quota as fat demand and protein demand are not moving together? Here’s what you won’t read elsewhere about the new Class 7 pricing and why it was implemented in Canada so that Canadian processors can use competitively-priced Canadian-produced protein solids that ride along with the now high-demand butterfat (on which their quota is based). Canada and the U.S. import and export dairy products and milk back and forth across the border with low tariffs up to a certain threshold. Perhaps, in the case of Canada, the U.S. should just reciprocate with high over-quota tariffs and tighter quota thresholds on Canadian fluid milk exports we know head south of the border. Canadian farmers have taken a step to show a willingness to be responsible in this discussion. They have moved to control their exports by reducing quota up to 3% this year after seeing 25% growth related almost exclusively to butterfat demand over the past 4 years.

By Sherry Bunting, Farmshine, August 24, 2018

ALBANY, N.Y. — “Cycles don’t exist in a supply-managed system,” said Canadian dairy farmer Nick Thurler. He sits on the Dairy Farmers of Ontario (DFO) board and operates a dairy farm of 500 registered Holsteins with his brother and their sons.

Thurler9413w Thurler was a presenter at the Dairy Summit organized by Agri-Mark in Albany, New York on August 13. The summit gathered 350 people, half of them dairy farmers, and many of the producers in attendance being on various U.S. milk cooperative boards.

Thurler explained how the Canadian milk quota system works and some of the changes they have seen over the past three years in response to increased demand for butterfat.

He noted that the entire system is completely run by dairy farmers via provincial boards and that there are 450 processors in Canada with 80 to 85% of the country’s milk marketed to Parmalat, Saputo, Agropur, and Arla.

Thurler explained how the Canadian quota is based on kilograms of butterfat production per day. All milk is sold to the provincial boards and they look after all the pickup and delivery of milk to the plants.

A government entity audits the processor stocks, which weighs into the market needs.

Quota value was capped some years ago at $24,000 per cow and new quota is distributed by dividing half equally over all producers and then the second half is prorated up to 10% of an individual producer’s current quota.

Meetings are held with processors and government once a year to “discuss the issues.”

The Canadian milk prices are determined with a formula that is 50% based on the change in cost of production at the farm level and 50% on the consumer price index.

Thurler said the current price to farmers stands at around $25 in U.S. dollars.

“It’s actually a little lower now because we have a little too much milk in the system,” he said, explaining that quota this year is being cut by up to 3% to balance that.

As noted around the world, demand for butterfat has increased, and since this is how Canadian quota is determined, increases in quotas continued higher over the past three to four years.

In addition, as demand for butter and cream increased, farmers became acutely aware of how their imports were increasing.

Thurler noted that when he got on the DFO board in 2014, “It drove me nuts the amount of butter we were importing.”

Canada allows imports to a certain threshold and after that, imposes high tariffs to protect its farmers. But as demand for butter increased — and Canadian farmers were just beginning to fill quota expansion to address that — U.S. processors (some of them Canadian-owned) saw the concentrated proteins product from the technology of ultrafiltered milk did not “fit” any category in the harmonized tariff schedule. Thus, the U.S. butter processors and cooperatives could, and did, export ultrafiltered milk (wet concentrated protein solids) to Canadian cheese and yogurt processors — free of tariffs.

Over the last three to four years, as Canadian dairy quota increased, producers had some difficulty keeping up with that progressive expansion of 4% per year in butterfat production, and could recoup their own previously-unfilled quota within a time frame.

These dynamics led to a combined surge in milk production in Canada coming into this year, up nearly 25% compared with four years ago.

As they were supplying more of the increased butterfat needs, they needed a market for the residual skim that was costing producers a lot in drying costs. This is why and when the Class 7 pricing was implemented to allow Canadian producers to offer skim solids associated with the butterfat demand growth their expanded quota supplies.

Under Class 7 pricing, these wet protein solids — remaining after the cream is separated — can be sold to their own processors at globally competitive prices, thereby avoiding the drying costs, and consequently at the same time, reducing the incentive for Canadian processors to import these protein solids (ultrafiltered milk) from the U.S. and other sources.

Thurler said in an interview after his presentation that it was never the intention to implement this Class 7 pricing as a tool for creating Canadian exports to compete with the U.S., but rather to align Canada’s milk production growth opportunities between producers and processors in a way that uses both the rapidly increasing demand for fat, on which their quota system is based, and the slower demand increase for skim. That pricing still uses an 83% to 17% split between domestic quota pricing and global pricing so that it still reasonably fits their supply-managed system.

Thurler had also indicated that Class 7 was put in place after a review by WTO lawyers to make sure it was compliant. Canada is allowed to export “some” dairy under its current trade agreements.

After this report was published, public statistics on global dairy trade were revealed, showing that Canada accounts for less than half of one percent of total global dairy exports.

Additional data for first 6 months 2018 from EU reporting (Milk Market Observatory) These exporter rankings: Canada ranked 7th in SMP exports at 35,344 tons, up 14% over first half 2017, but just 2.8% of top 10 total (1.3 mil ton); U.S. was 2nd at 386,766 ton, +25%. In Casein exports, Canada ranked 9th at a paltry 210 ton, up 64% but just 0.02% (2/10ths of one percent) of top 10 total (90,000 ton); US ranked 4th at 1822 ton, up 3%. In Whey powder exports, Canada ranked 4th at 34,133 tons, up 8%, but 4.8% of top 10 total (711,931 ton); U.S. ranked 2nd at 282,893 tons, up 16%.

In the first 6 months of 2018, Canada imported 19% less butterfat and butteroil than year ago, but was still 10th in top 10 IMPORTER of butterfat at over 10,000 ton.

Interestingly, the U.S. was the 3rd highest butterfat and butteroil IMPORTER after China (1) and Russia (2). The U.S. imported 12% more butterfat and butteroil than year ago in the first 6 months of 2018, and more than twice as much as Canada, at over 22,000 tons. The U.S. also ranked 4th in condensed milk imports, up 11% at 18,117 tons during the first 6 months of 2018 — particularly in the so-called ‘spring flush’ months of April, May and June.

Stay tuned.

Dear Trump and Trudeau: The dairy debacle doesn’t have to be this way

Posted on July 15, 2018 by Agmoos

Dairy epicenter of trade friction between leaders

By Sherry Bunting

originally published in Farmshine, June 15, 2018

QUEBEC — Dairy remains at the epicenter of a trade dispute between the U.S. and Canada.

President Donald Trump and his team have been busy renegotiating NAFTA and looking at the TPP, and while progress was being made in many areas, dairy has become a sticking point that has led to friction and word-volleys between President Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the aftermath of the G7 meeting in Quebec in June.

Headlines after the G7 upset proclaimed that the U.S. is demanding an end to Canada’s dairy supply management system. Actually, President Trump is more specifically seeking an end to the 270% tariffs paid on U.S. dairy exports to Canada.

While the tariffs are much smaller on dairy exports that fall within Canada’s quota of 10% of their domestic production, these tariffs rise exponentially to as much as 313% on dairy exports to Canada beyond the import quota amounts.

On the U.S. side of the import/export coin, import license figures show that DFA holds much of the fluid milk import quota exported to the U.S. from Canada. Many other companies also import dairy products from Canada; however, the value of U.S. dairy imports from Canada is just 20% of the value of dairy the U.S. annually exports to Canada.

In other words, the U.S. exports five times the amount of dairy products to Canada that Canada exports to the U.S. (on a value, not volume, basis) even though Canadian tariffs are high, and U.S. tariffs are low.

Who is advising the President on dairy? National Milk Producers Federation? Dairy processing interests in Wisconsin (Speaker Paul Ryan’s home state) and New York (Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s home state)? Those two states had been selling ultrafiltered milk north of the border through a loophole that ended two years ago when Canada began its Class 7 pricing for milk destined to be used in products that are exported. This allowed expansion of Canadian quota to fill the growing demand for milkfat in domestic products by providing an off-valve to be competitive exporting the skim milk that rides along with that milkfat.

The issue arises from, first, the loss of a market for U.S. ultrafiltered dairy protein to Canadian manufacturers of cheese and other dairy products, which for several years has been exported to Canada — without tariffs — because it wasn’t a product defined in the tariff schedule.

What changed? Canada added its new Class 7, which allows Canadian processors to purchase milk (skim) from Canadian farms at lower prices when it is used to offset the increase in butterfat demand (the other part of the milk) sold into their domestic market where pricing is governed by producer-run milk marketing boards to support the country’s milk production quota system.

Canada has allowed farms to increase milk production quotas by 4 to 6% annually over the past four years due to greater domestic demand for butterfat. This leaves more skim floating around to be absorbed in their relatively ‘closed’ dairy market.

The new Class 7, in Canada, allows processors to make skim milk powder — and other dairy protein ingredients — at much lower costs to be able to then export the excess at prices below the global market, because the majority of the producer pricing is still based on the stability of milk supply quotas set by domestic use on a milkfat basis. In spite of this, Canada exports less than 5% of the world’s skim milk powder but does export a modest amount of “food prep” products containing dairy.

The loss of an export market for U.S. ultrafiltered milk solids going to Canada is not the biggest concern. The growing U.S. concern is that the Canadian Class 7 pricing scheme has provided the means for Canada to sell increasing amounts of skim solids to Mexico, which is currently the number-one export destination for U.S. skim milk powder, and that this can increase as quotas expand, at the same time reducing the need for butterfat imports from the U.S. (Canada recently showed a sign of good faith by reducing quota by 3% this year even though quota is based on butterfat demand that is increasing. They are trying to manage the skim portion without exporting more than what they are supposed to in their supply-managed system).

Trudeau knows that his party will lose support from Quebec if he does not stand firm on the supply-managed system for dairy. Moreover, this system has been in place for over 60 years, and what makes it work is the protection from imports via high tariffs.

Does the U.S. have the right to demand our ally and trading partner, Canada, give up its dairy supply management system? And if they did give it up through a transitional process over 10 years, could they not become an even more competitive force on global markets?

Multi-national dairy processors have long sought an end to Canada’s dairy supply management system because their growth in Canada is limited by the fact that they must apply for processing quota — allotted for processors to make dairy products only in amounts that reflect Canada’s domestic supply and demand.

Canadian companies — like Saputo and Agropur — in fact, have expanded processing capacity in the U.S., in order to produce dairy products with U.S. milk for the U.S. and global markets.

That said, is it really smart for the U.S. to demand that Canada end its supply-managed dairy system?

When we say “America first” in trade, should we not expect Canada to reply with “Canada first” as they negotiate?

The point here is two-fold. First, the U.S. could learn something by evaluating how Canada is using its new export (Class 7) to price its “growth” milk, mainly the skim milk that rides along with the increased demand for milkfat.

As consumers learn the truth about full fat dairy, both here and around the world, more milk is needed to supply the increased demand for fat, while not all of the skim is in equally high demand until more processing innovations are in place.

This is a new dairy market development both nations must deal with in their respective systems that were designed to accommodate the past 40-years of flawed lowfat diet dogma.

Instead of simply pointing fingers at Canada, should the U.S. not be analyzing its own government-controlled pricing fixtures? After all, the relationship between USDA and NMPF is a tight one. Not only do their economists float from one entity to the other in their careers, the two jointly control the Federal Order rulemaking process from how petitions are submitted to how hearings are administrated to how NMPF member-cooperatives bloc-vote for their farmer member-owners.

We could benefit from better negotiations with our friend to the North, but now we have gotten into a spitting-match over a system that Canada’s dairy farmers have invested millions into and where most seem to oppose dismantling.

Yet Canada has found a way to participate in the global dairy market by making a pricing loophole to gain export sales for their dairy proteins while ending a loophole the U.S. dairy industry was previously exploiting by exporting ultrafiltered milk to Canada — a double-whammy for the U.S.

The U.S. and Canada have a long alliance on many fronts as nations, and also within dairy. One has only to attend the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin and other dairy events and exchanges to see a legacy of competitive camaraderie between our nations.

Let’s not allow the agendas of multi-national dairy processors to drive a wedge.

Is the strong rhetoric surrounding this dairy dispute — and the demands about ending Canada’s supply management — just President Trump’s negotiating tactic of laying the whole game on the table before figuring out how to arrange the pieces in a way that both nations can accept?

If I had Trump’s ear on this issue, I would caution him about hidden agendas among those advising him on dairy.

I would ask him to spend time on a dairy farm, with a room full of dairy farmers, to understand that, yes, all is fair in business as they each seek markets and growth opportunities, but that most U.S. producers do not want to prop themselves up by tearing down their neighbors. There are far deeper problems in the U.S. dairy industry at the moment.

I would ask Trump to stand firm on explaining that Canada can’t have it both ways — with supply-managed dairy production and import tariffs on one side, plus selling their Class-7 priced milk powder at globally low prices to obtain new export markets for their excess on the other.

I would ask both leaders to grapple with their nation’s respective choices: The U.S. has already chosen a global pathway for agriculture and dairy. Canada has chosen a domestic pathway with supply management. We can either compromise and work together to develop a hybrid approach, or we can each accept the consequences of the respective choices our nations have made in this regard.

The U.S. could put tariffs on Canadian milk and dairy products, and develop an export class for pricing our own excess growth milk to compete globally while stabilizing domestic-use prices — similar to Canada’s new construct — or we can convince our neighbors to limit their growth, within their supply-managed system, so as not to continue expanding via the Class 7 export pricing in a way that intrudes on the dairy export markets we have cultivated in other countries, such as Mexico.

A similar spitting-match between our countries ended the U.S. Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) for beef and pork. That was merely a labeling attempt to identify U.S. produced meat from conception to consumption so that U.S. consumers could choose to support U.S. farmers and ranchers. Canada was among the nations that had taken the U.S. to WTO court a few years ago, and the result was that the U.S. Congress ended COOL to avoid fines, and this has hurt U.S. beef producers.

President Trump has said recently that the U.S. is not planning to pull out of the WTO, but it does want treatment that is more fair.

Now, here we go again, with the shoe on the other foot. This time, Canada’s sacred cow — supply managed dairy and high import tariffs — are being questioned. But in reality, the Class 7 pricing policy is the more pragmatic concern.

Instead of both nations trying to have it both ways while our leaders volley back and forth in a spitting-match on tariffs and mandates and the like — maybe we could all concentrate on negotiating outcomes that are focused on the farming side and not so much the multi-national processing side — to make farming great again.

After all, as go our farmers, so go our nations.

Author’s July 14 update: It was reported within the past 10 days that Quebec, Canada’s largest dairy-producing province, may be softening its stance to reconsider the Class 7 milk price policy to ease tensions between the U.S. and Canada. Bloomberg News reported that Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard met with U.S. Ag Secretary Sonny Perdue, noting that the Class 7 pricing policy is the main sticking point — not Canada’s supply management system of domestic milk quotas and import tariffs. In a recent televised interview, Secretary Perdue said: “The U.S. is not about trying to get Canada to ditch its supply management system…” He explained that if Canada is going to have a supply management system, “you’ve got to manage the supply, and not over-produce and not over-quota to where you dump milk solids on the world market and depress prices for our producers.” The Canadian Class 7 export pricing — in place for the past 18 months — has facilitated the export of excess milk proteins while blocking most dairy product imports. The U.S. is not alone in this concern as other countries are also affected by the movement of the lower-priced Canadian skim milk powder (SMP) to markets served by nations that do not have a supply-managed system and which do not place extremely high tariffs on dairy imports. For the first four months of 2018, Canada has doubled its SMP exports compared with year ago and by 95% over the levels prior to the 2017 start of the Class 7 pricing, which allows milk to be priced much lower when used for products that are exported, and this is doable when the main portion of Canadian farm milk pricing is stable and higher because it is matched to their domestic usage on a milkfat basis.

Global dairy thoughts Part II: Who’s being creative?

Posted on May 17, 2018 by Agmoos

Part Two of Five-part “Global Dairy Thoughts” Series in Farmshine

By Sherry Bunting, from Farmshine May 4, 2018

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Everywhere we turn, we receive the message that fresh fluid milk is a market of the past and exports of less perishable dairy products are the wave of the future. As discussed in Part One of this ‘global dairy thoughts’ series, that seems to be the trend if you look at the markets.

Yet, could a portion of the reason we are in this fluid milk decline, be the effect of USDA-regulated pricing, USDA-imposed restraints on the ability to promote competitively in the beverage space, and the resulting industry neglect of this regulated commodity category — fresh fluid milk?

The government — USDA — and the checkoff and cooperative leadership have no appetite for significant change to any of these factors. USDA gets to pay less than it otherwise might for milk in its nutrition assistance programs, while both the proprietary and cooperative processors get to pay less than they might otherwise for components in a range of products.

Meanwhile, dairy farms see the first product to come from their herds — milk — declining, and their futures along with it.

Yes. We all know it. Fresh fluid milk — the most nutritious and natural option — is in the fight of its life. In meeting after meeting, presentation after presentation, we hear the messages from the industry and university economists — both subtly and outright.

Like this: “The fluid milk market is the dead horse we need to stop beating.”

Or this: “Do we want to hitch our wagon to a falling rock?”

And so forth, and so on.

It is difficult to question the industry and its economists on anything to do with the Eastern U.S. or the fluid milk market. Some have gone so far as to say that if the East is relying on fluid milk, they are out of luck.

Meanwhile, dairy farmers in eastern regions suggest that if fluid milk does not stabilize its losses or restore its market share — at least partially — they see their value as producers vanishing.

And in fact, this has an impact on our global advantage — that being the U.S. having a large consumer base at home to anchor the base production while growth is said to be the reason why we need exports.

As mentioned briefly in Part One, the Federal Orders are designed to move the milk from surplus regions to deficit regions, and that is what the proposed USDA change in Orders 5 and 7 will do further, the experts say.

Meanwhile, who is being creative to figure out how the deficit regions of the East can use or regain their primary competitive advantage — having a base of consumers within a day’s drive. This line of thinking is analogous to how the U.S. fits as an exporting nation with quite a large consumer base at home.

What really requires our creativity is the U.S. product mix and how milk resources are priced and sourced.

Here are some numbers. U.S. dairy protein disappearance has had average annual growth of 6.3% over the past five years, though it has been a bumpy ride, with U.S. production of milk protein concentrate (less exports) at its lowest levels over that five-year period in 2014.

Meanwhile, demand for fat is increasing as consumers heed the dietary revelations and switch from lowfat and fat-free milk to whole milk and have their butter without guilt.

Mentioned last week in part one is that global milk production increases are beyond the stable rate of 1.5% per year. According to the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC), the combined growth rate from the EU-28, U.S., New Zealand, Australia and Argentina was double that collective 1.5% threshold. Looking at 2018, however, reports are surfacing to show spring flush is delayed in Europe just as it appears to be in the U.S.

Or is global production reining in? The markets are trying to figure that out with quite a rally going in powder right now.

One thing rarely mentioned in these reports is that Canada’s production has also grown with increased quota to account for the greater demand they see in their domestic market for dairy fat.

In fact, despite its supply management system, government figures show Canada’s milk production had year-over-year growth between 3 and 6% for each of the past three years, and 2018 production is off to a 5% start.

In Canada, as in the U.S., fat fortunes have changed over the past four years, so the belt has been loosened to serve that market, leaving more skim swimming around.

Canada’s new export class (Class 7) mainly pertains to this excess skim, which has reduced the amount of ultrafiltered milk they now buy from U.S. processors.

In addition, as pointed out by Calvin Covington in his presentation at the Georgia Dairy Conference in January, milk can be purchased at lower prices for this Canadian export Class 7 because the excess skim is used in products that are then exported.

This means the resulting products in the Canadian export class can be sold at globally competitive prices. While not in huge volumes, some of this product is going to Mexico.

This brings us to Mexico — currently the largest buyer of U.S.-produced nonfat dry milk, making the outcome of NAFTA negotiations a sticky issue for industry leaders, especially as Mexico recently signed a trade deal with the EU to include dairy.

The two forks come together in regions like the Northeast, where Class IV utilization has become an increasing part of the blend price and a more important balancer of the shrinking Class I.

While March showed a surprising jump in Class III utilization to a 15-year high in the Northeast, the overall trend over the past four years has been a blend price with increasing Class IV utilization and decreases in Classes I, II and III.

Dairy economists indicate the U.S. is making more world-standard skim milk powder for export, but in reality, the U.S. still makes a high percentage of nonfat dry milk (NFDM), which is still the largest domestically-produced milk powder category and it is the only milk powder that is used in the Federal Order pricing formulas.

NFDM is primarily made in conjunction with butter. As butter demand has grown and prompted greater butter production in the U.S. over the past four years, more NFDM has been made and stored (or the skim is dumped) as a result.

The market issue in the U.S. has been compounded by the EU having a mountain of intervention powder stocks in storage, some of it aging.

After the European Commission sold over 24 metric tons two weeks ago, global and domestic powder markets moved higher. It was the largest chunk to come out of that mountain to-date and was offered at reduced prices to attract buyers. But by the time the bidding was done, it sold at or above the GDT price for SMP powder.

It’s really true. Inventory depresses prices. Having a big chunk of a huge inventory gone, is, well, big.

The flip side of the coin is that European processors have shifted from powder production with their excess to making more cheese and butter.

Next in Part Three, we will look specifically at some differences between the products made in the U.S. vs. what is traded globally, and at the differences between the U.S. and global trading platforms.

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PHOTO CAPTION

GDC18-Day1-56

While attending the 2018 Georgia Dairy Conference in January, a large global cargo ship on the Savannah River, passed by the glass windows at lunchtime on its way out to sea. Several dairy producers walked outside for a closer look, we all hoped there was plenty of powder on board. Photo by Sherry Bunting

Global dairy thoughts Part I: Whirlpool of change. Who’s minding the store?

Posted on May 10, 2018 by Agmoos

Part One of Six-part “Global Dairy Thoughts” Series in Farmshine

By Sherry Bunting, from Farmshine, April 27, 2018

BROWNSTOWN, Pa. — Even though U.S. per-capita milk consumption is in decline, consumption of other dairy products is strong. As the industry devotes resources to new milk markets abroad and puts the fluid milk market here at home on commodity autopilot: Who’s minding the store?

While it is true that the U.S. dairy market is ‘mature’ — not offering the growth-curve found in emerging export markets — the U.S. consumer market is still considered the largest, most well-established and coveted destination for dairy products and ingredients in the world.

As U.S. milk production continues to increase despite entering a fourth straight year of low prices and market losses, industry leaders look to exports for new demand that can match the trajectory of new milk.

The U.S. has already joined the ranks of major dairy exporting nations, and the U.S. Dairy Export Council (USDEC) has set a goal to increase exports from the current 15% (milk equiv) to 20%. Keep in mind that as our percentage of exports increases while our milk production also increases, the volume of export markets required to meet this goal is compounded.

On one path at this fork in the road is the mature domestic market with its sagging fluid milk sector that is increasingly filled in deficit regions by transportation of milk from rapidly growing surplus regions.

This dilemma of getting milk that is increasingly produced away from consumers packaged and moved toward consumers was cited as a “tricky challenge” by Dr. Mark Stephenson, Director of Dairy Markets and Policy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in his presentation on Changing Dairy Landscapes: Regional Perspectives at the Heartland Dairy Expo in Springfield, Missouri earlier this year. In this presentation, Stephenson pegged the Northeast milk deficit at 8 bil lbs and the Southeast deficit at 41 bil lbs. (More on this in a future part of this series).

On the other path at this fork in the road is the industry’s desire to expand exports within a global market that needs a 1.5% year-over-year global production increase. But, as the USDEC reported in its February global dairy outlook, global milk output is growing by twice that rate, mainly from gains in Europe.

Meanwhile, U.S. regulatory pricing structures are based on milk utilization. As the total dairy processing pie grows larger, the neglected fluid milk sector becomes a shrinking piece of the expanding pie, and income is further diminished for dairy farms.

The emerging export markets are rooted in the demographic of rising middle-class populations improving diets with dairy. And yet, just because these new markets offer new growth curves for new milk production, the anchor for this ship is still the U.S. market, still No. 1 as the largest dairy consumer sector globally, and still moving milk via Federal Order pricing that hinges on that shrinking piece of the expanding pie: Class I.

What are the obstacles to improving this sagging fluid milk sector? How are regulated promotion and pricing constraining restoration of declining fluid milk sales?

Over the past three years, two prominent and longstanding milk bottlers in the New York / New Jersey metropolis have either closed their plants (Elmhurst in New York City), or sold their dairy assets (Cumberland Dairy in New Jersey sold to DFA). Amazingly, the former owners of both plants are expanding into the alternative beverage space — adding new plant-based beverages to the proliferation of fraudulent ‘milks’ that already litter the supermarket dairy case.

While dairy milk sales decline, plant-based beverages are a growth market, though the pace of growth has slowed.

At the Georgia Dairy Conference in January, Rob Fox, Dairy Sector Manager of Wells Fargo’s Food and Agribusiness Industry Advisors, talked about big picturedairy trends, and he showed graphically the way these alternatives are eating into the U.S. dairy milk market. While dairy milk sales decline, the plant-based beverages are a growth market, though the pace of growth has slowed. (See Chart 1)

Fox also showed a pie chart of combined supermarket sales of dairy and plant beverages at $17 bil., with dairy accounting for $15.6 bil. and plant-based at $1.4 bil. (Chart 2).

Rob Fox showed a pie chart of combined supermarket sales of dairy and plant beverages at $17 bil with dairy accounting for $15.6 bil. and plant-based at $1.4 bil.

Doing the math, Fox remarked that the plant-based alternatives now represent 8.9% of the combined dairy and plant-based ‘milk’ market. He said that in other countries with mature dairy markets, these alternative beverages tended to level off in growth when reaching 10% of total dairy market share. But at the same time, the combined dairy and plant beverage sector has also declined from 6.4 billion units in 2013 to 6.1 in 2017, according to Fox.

He noted the alternatives are also infiltrating other dairy product categories and that these ‘next generation’ products are offering much better nutrition than earlier versions. “But they will never compete with dairy milk, nutritionally,” Fox said.

What these alternative beverages have going for them, said Fox, is very high margins for processors and investors.

He explained that plant-based dairy products have low ingredient costs, are easier to manufacture, package, market and distribute and are seen as ‘greener’ and animal friendly. They are better positioned for e-commerce and kiosk-type retail outlets and are made by innovative marketing companies and startups with a market and margin profile that attracts investors.

Meanwhile, dairy milk is a highly regulated market with a prevailing commodity mindset worn down even more-so by supermarket price wars at the retail level, making it difficult for the dairy milk sector to adapt to U.S. consumer market trends.

U.S. consumer trends gravitate toward innovation and specialization so everyone can be a ‘snowflake,’” Fox explained, adding that areas of growth for the dairy milk sector will be full-fat in smaller containers, dairy protein in sports nutrition, and non-GMO branding. (No joke: Look for more later on genetically-modified, aka GMO, lab-manufactured products like Perfect Day that are actively defending what they see as their right to use the term ‘animal-free dairy’ because their product is said to be compositionally the same as milk, derived from genetically modified laboratory yeast exuding a white substance they say IS milk.)

That said, where is the true and simply original dairy in its re-branding process? What efforts are being made to compete to reverse this fluid milk market decline? Wouldn’t revitalization of the fluid milk sector also provide a demand pull for U.S. production growth?

Fresh fluid milk is not interchangeable on the global stage as are milk powders, fat powders, protein powders, cheeses, butter and aseptically packaged shelf-stable fluid products.

Meanwhile, the fastest growing surplus regions of the U.S. are busy aligning with retailer/processors and utilizing the Federal Order pricing schemes to pull their production growth into milk-deficit regions, leaving the milk-deficit region’s producers sending their milk to manufacturing homes in other Orders, or even looking for ways to export from eastern ports.

The U.S. has the water, the feed, the space, the transportation, logistics and support infrastructure, as well as a large existing domestic market to anchor the base production level of our nation’s farmers. The U.S. also has a legacy of dairy producers that are respected for their progress, animal care and food safety.

The ingredients for global success are here, but other factors need evaluation because the success is eluding dairy farm families as they face their fourth year of low prices and lost markets forcing increased numbers to exit the business.

In future installments of this multi-part series “Global Thoughts,” we’ll look more closely at the export side of this fork in the road, including the product trends, product and trading platform differences, imports, transportation and logistics, the role of regulatory pricing and cooperative base programs at a time when the dairy landscape is being forever changed.

As this series proceeds, thoughts and questions are welcome: agrite2011@gmail.com

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Ag Moos

Tag Archives: dairy exports

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