For the January-August period, dairy embryo exports totaled 10,918, the highest eight-month total to start the year in the past five years, already surpassing the 2021 annual total.

The most striking factors driving hay markets are related to alfalfa exports, domestic prices for dairy-quality hay and an early start to the supplemental feeding season in drought areas.

Impacts of higher processing costs could drive the spread between all-milk and mailbox prices wider.

A wide gap in September Federal Milk Marketing Order (FMMO) Class IV and Class milk prices extends the incentive to depool Class IV milk.

• 2023 DMC enrollment period is Oct. 17-Dec. 9
• Farm bill dairy provisions reviewed
• California, New York approve farm labor laws
• GDT product prices decline
• Ag producer sentiment drifts lower

June 2022 “mailbox” prices averaged about $1.03 per hundredweight (cwt) less than announced average “all-milk” prices for the same month.

Digest highlights

• See us at World Dairy Expo
• Vitaliano: Dairy markets face near-term uncertainty
• Dairy cull cow marketing jumped in August
• Fed ratchets interest rates higher
• Longhorned tick discovered in northern Missouri
• Farmland values to plateau

Progressive Dairy provides monthly online updates of important dates, reports and advice affecting risk management decisions.

Analyzing the Class I mover, the spread in the monthly advanced Class III skim milk pricing factor ($7.04 per cwt) and advanced Class IV skim milk pricing factor ($12.67 per cwt) is $5.63 per cwt, the widest since July 2020.