Two weeks ago we wrote about the cheese case sitting at its winter low. This week the line on the chart has turned, and it's worth pausing on both what changed and what didn't.
Class III futures have been climbing steadily since mid-February, and several members who sell into the wholesale block-and-barrel market tell us the tone on their weekly calls has shifted from "hold what you can" to "start thinking about spring volume." That's a real change, even if the recovery is uneven — a firmer number on a national report doesn't automatically show up in a small creamery's next invoice. If your contracts are priced off a lagging formula, you may be looking at another few weeks before the improvement reaches you.
Why the case is thawing
Part of the story is simple seasonal restocking after a slow winter. Part of it is stronger movement on the export side, where solids-equivalent shipments have been running ahead of last year — good news if you sell commodity product, less directly relevant if your business is a twelve-wheel-a-week aged cheddar operation, but it does tend to firm up the broader market you're pricing against. We'd caution against reading too much into one strong month. Cheese and butter stocks are still elevated compared with a normal year, and a rebound in stocks-heavy categories can stall out fast if restaurant and foodservice demand doesn't keep pace.
The relief package, and what to do about it now
Separately, and probably more consequential for a lot of our smaller members: a large federal pandemic relief package is expected to be signed into law this week, and unlike some of last year's rounds, this one specifically earmarks money for small and midsized food processors, farmers markets, and direct producers — not just restaurants. There's also new funding aimed at agricultural commodity purchases, including dairy, that's meant to move product through a channel that's been thin for a year.
We don't have program details yet — administering agencies typically take weeks to publish rules, application forms, and eligibility criteria after a bill like this is signed — and we're not going to guess at figures or deadlines before that guidance exists. What we can tell you is that "small food processor" language of this kind has, in prior relief rounds, ended up covering aging rooms and retail creamery operations that didn't expect to qualify. If you assumed the last round wasn't for you, it may be worth checking again once the rules come out.
There's nothing to apply for yet, and we'd rather you not spend March chasing a program that doesn't have a form attached to it. What is useful right now: make sure your business's basic paperwork — EIN, any prior relief program numbers, a current profit-and-loss statement — is in a folder you can find quickly. Every relief round so far has rewarded members who could turn an application around inside 48 hours of a portal opening, and penalized members who spent that window hunting for a 2019 tax return.
We'll flag the program specifics in a future post the moment agency guidance is public. Until then, if you have questions about how a relief program interacted with your business last year, our Membership & Outreach Committee has fielded a lot of these questions and is a good first call.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.