After a heart-stopping plunge off the cliff, the milk powder markets found a ledge and clambered upward. CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) regained 1.75ȼ this week and closed at $2.09 per pound. That’s well below the recent peak, but it’s a historically lofty perch from which the market can pause, catch its breath, and determine if it has the strength to keep climbing, or if it should continue the descent toward historically normal levels that are far below today’s prices.

I spent two days this week at the San Joaquin Valley Water Resiliency Summit at Fresno State. I was on a panel on day one talking about the Water Blueprint’s Unified Valley Water Plan and how it might fit into the State of California’s Water Plan 2028.

When Wile E. Coyote plummets off a cliff, Warner Brothers inevitably plays a “descending slide whistle.” That heart-dropping sound echoed across LaSalle Street this week as the bottom fell out of the milk powder market. The short squeeze is over. The two milk powder manufacturers who were desperately bidding for product to meet the commitments they could not fill with their own supplies due to food safety recalls have likely caught up and are back to using their own powder. A

The dairy markets retreated this week, led by a 6.75ȼ drop in Cheddar blocks. CME spot Cheddar closed at $1.555 per pound, within a tic of its lowest price in two months. Cheesemakers continue to crank out product. Domestic demand is climbing, but not as quickly as production. In the first quarter, U.S. cheese output was 3.1% greater than the year before, while domestic consumption climbed 2.3%. Exports absorbed the surplus and then some. But the industry can’t count on expor

Nonfat dry milk (NDM) remains the belle of the dairy ball as prices rose to fresh record highs this week. On Thursday, the spot price hit an all-time peak of $2.295/lb. though the price dipped a half cent on the final day of trading. By the conclusion of Friday’s spot session, NDM was up 2.75¢ from last week. While elevated NDM price levels have provided an encouraging lift to Class IV milk prices, they have also made U.S. milk powder uncompetitive compared to other internati

A tiny bit of air leaked out of the spot milk powder market, and the entire dairy complex deflated. CME spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) notched an all-time high on Tuesday at $2.265 per pound. Prices slipped Wednesday and Thursday and then bounced back on Friday. Spot NDM closed the week at $2.2625, just a hairsbreadth off the high and up 0.25ȼ for the week.

On Tuesday afternoon, the State Water Resources Control Board spent more than four hours considering requests from eight Tule Subbasin groundwater sustainability agencies (GSAs) to be excluded from the SGMA probation requirements – specifically, the requirements to report groundwater pumping and pay state fees tied to that pumping. See the next article for a meeting recap.

The short squeeze continues. Someone – or several someones – desperately need milk powder and they need it now. USDA’s Dairy Market News reports that prices are high enough that most milk powder users “are only buying loads to meet their immediate needs.” But for those that can’t do without, “it is difficult to find loads.” They bid the spot nonfat dry milk (NDM) market all the way up to $2.26 per pound this week, up 6ȼ from last Friday to a fresh all-time high. The spot mark

The milk powder market is sprinting straight uphill. Nonfat dry milk (NDM) rallied another 8.5ȼ this week and reached $2.20 per pound, the highest-ever price in the product’s 18-year tenure at the CME spot market. The short squeeze continues. USDA’s Dairy Market News reports that spot loads are tight from coast to coast, and they’re “particularly difficult to find in the Central region” where the expansion in cheese processing capacity has reduced the need for balancing. Even

The Kings County Farm Bureau (KCFB) was in court this week on their lawsuit against the State Water Resources Control Board. Here is an update from Dusty Ference, KCFB Executive Director:

It was pretty exciting to hear at the Friant Water Authority (FWA) board meeting this week about the huge and immediate impact the $200 million allocation from the Big Beautiful Bill Congress passed a few months ago is having on FWA. New pump stations will soon be under construction and right of way purchases will be commencing on the next phase of the parallel canal subsidence fix on Friant-Kern. The influx of federal funding also paved the way to remove a huge conflict with

Today marks the official start of spring and longer days and warmer temperatures are helping to spur milk volumes upward seasonally. But changing seasons aren’t the only factor driving milk production growth as volumes continue to post impressive year over year gains. In its Milk Production report published this afternoon, USDA estimated that U.S. dairy producers made 18.255 billion pounds of milk in February, 2.9% more than during the same month last year. The agency also re

On February 9, 2026, Congressmen Costa, Gray, Valadao and Fong jointly sent a letter to Governor Newsom (read here) asking him to suspend a regulation in the Delta called the Port Chicago water quality standard because the triggering of this standard would require releases from the reservoirs and the loss of as much as 600,000 acre-feet of fresh water to the ocean. If you remember, in January the California drought map showed our state for the first time in a long time comple

The dairy markets are contending with an abundance of milk and a fresh infusion of global turmoil. That amped up the volatility on LaSalle Street. CME spot Cheddar blocks came out strong on Monday and rallied to a four-month high at $1.63 per pound. But as the week wore on, blocks’ enthusiasm waned. They settled today at $1.53, down 8.75ȼ for the week.

It has been a dramatic and volatile week, both in and out of the dairy markets. All eyes have been on the developing conflict in the Middle East and analysts have been scrambling to deduce the impact for the dairy market. Outside of drastically reduced dairy demand in the Gulf States, concerns are circulating around two key issues. Firstly, freight rates have soared as standard shipping routes...

Butter futures jumped this week on the heels of a bullish Cold Storage report. USDA pegged January 31 butter inventories at 215.4 million pounds, down 17.4% from the year before. Domestic butter demand was robust and exports were strong enough to offset the significant growth in U.S. butterfat output. More recently, though, USDA’s Dairy Market News reported that butter churns are running “seven days a week… at or near max capacity.” And manufacturers tell Dairy Market News th

We had a good week of rain and snow. It is too early to tell what ultimate impact this week’s precipitation will have on this summer’s irrigation water supplies, but it is definitely positive. It also reduced the water cost impact of an old Delta regulation that requires releases of water stored in the reservoirs to be sent to the ocean to maintain a particular water quality level at “Port Chicago,” which is located in the western Delta. This regulation was put in place back

February weather and February trading have been unusually mercurial, with a mix of frigid lows, massive snowstorms, and warm, sunny skies. On LaSalle Street this week the Class III markets ran hot and then cold as traders digested news about international prices, government dairy purchases, and dairy exports. Butter, milk powder, and Class IV futures caught fire and stayed hot all week thanks to almost daily doses of bullish news.

It was another dramatic week on LaSalle. Seemingly inspired by the Olympians in Milan-Cortina, the markets underwent their own fits of athletic prowess as they jumped, twirled, and in some cases tumbled. The market tone is unsettled as buyers and sellers are going head-to-head. By the conclusion of Friday’s spot session, every commodity sat at a lower price than a week prior. However, that simple conclusion belies the volatile activity that occurred over the course of the wee

Last November, we reported that Geoff Vanden Heuvel spoke at the 2025 Sustainable Agriculture Summit in Anaheim. Video of his presentation is now available and can be viewed here.