Here’s an update on risk management tools available through the USDA and/or USDA’s Risk Management Agency (RMA), as well as other information impacting your milk check.

Even with the fire loss, Texas cow numbers were up 5,000 head from a year ago.

Based on Class III-IV milk futures prices, depooling incentives flip back to Class IV milk handlers in May and June.

Corn and soybean meal price projections are lower, but on-farm hay inventories are down.

The Coca-Cola Company will build a new $650 million fairlife production facility in Monroe County, New York.

On a milk solids equivalent, March 2023 dairy product exports fell below the same month a year earlier, ending an 11-month streak of year-over-year gain.

Weaker milk prices and tighter milk margins have curtailed escalating national average cow prices.

January 2023 average “mailbox” prices averaged about 82 cents per hundredweight (cwt) less than announced average “all-milk” prices for the same month.

The March 2023 announced U.S. average milk price fell 50 cents from February to $21.10 per cwt, the lowest since November 2021.

Monthly dairy cull cow marketing hit a 36-year high in March, topping 300,000 head for just the third month since the whole-herd buyout program.