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Market advisor says U.S. cheese exports should pick up

A market advisor says the U.S. cheese market prices remain stubbornly low, but there might be a bright side. “It does seem like at these prices, we’re probably winning back some export business so hopefully, that can give us a lift here in the next few weeks.”

Katie Burgess with Ever.ag tells Brownfield with cheese prices in the $1.40s, that makes U.S. cheese the cheapest in the world and it should be winning over export business. “It’s really been our problem for the past twelve months is that we’re able to win spot sales so we’re able to book or contract out maybe a month or two but we have not been able to book those longer-term sales like a six-month deal or a nine-month deal.”

There’s another problem with cheese prices.  Burgess says if exports and demand grow enough to bring cheese prices back up to the $1.50 to $1.60 per pound range, it still does not bring milk prices paid to farmers up high enough for most of them to be profitable.

Burgess says prices were higher and more stable in 2014 and 2022 because the U.S. had more long-term cheese export deals in place.