If those countries turn to Europe for their cheese instead, the U.S. Last year, the United States exported more than 341,000 metric tons of cheese to countries such as Mexico and China. There’s one wrinkle in his calculus, Dykes admits: mounting trade tensions. This current record was driven by a buildup of non-American, non-Swiss cheeses – largely mozzarella, experts suspect – that could get drawn down by strong summer pizza sales. On top of that, cheesy foods remain a hallmark of the U.S. That’s because stock-to-use ratios, a measure of the amount of cheese taken out of storage, have remained constant even at these higher levels. Michael Dykes, president of the International Dairy Foods Association, said that although stocks are sky-high, he is confident Americans will eat through them. “And yes, that trickles down to dairy farmers.”ĭairy groups aren’t yet asking USDA to buy the surplus, however – a common practice that Newton calls “quantitative cheesing.” In 2016, dairy farmers requested that the agency buy more than 90 million pounds of cheese to cut the country’s “mountain” of excess dairy. “When inventories get too large, that pushes the prices down,” he said. The current price – $15.36 per 100 pounds – is about a dollar below the average for 2017 and well below the price that many farmers say they need to break even. That fall is problematic, said Mark Stephenson, director of dairy policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, because the price of cheese is a major factor in the equation that USDA uses to set the price that dairy farmers receive for their milk.

Volunteer Gordy Bergemann opens a round of swiss cheese during the World Championship Cheese Contest, Tuesday, March 6, 2018, in Madison, Wis. Cheese prices have fallen in recent weeks, Fuess said, a response both to the surplus and to growing trade concerns. That milk needs to get turned into something storable.”īut the sheer amount of cheese in storage may be causing problems. “I anticipate that we’ll continue to set these records,” said John Newton, director of market intelligence at the American Farm Bureau Federation. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.

Us cheese stockpile