Block cheddar on the wholesale spot market has now fallen for seven consecutive weeks, and by the middle of this month it had dropped to its lowest level since June 2021. Barrel cheddar isn't far behind, trading close to a dollar under where it sat a year ago. Nonfat dry milk and dry whey are sitting at multi-year lows right alongside it. If you've been staring at a spot-market print wondering whether it's a blip or a trend, we can tell you: this is a trend, and it's a broad one, not a cheddar-specific one.
The plain explanation is milk supply. Herds across the Midwest and Northeast are producing more than plants can comfortably absorb this spring, and spot milk has been easy to find at soft prices for weeks running. Some plants are running full tilt; others have scheduled maintenance downtime instead of buying more raw milk than they need. Layer on a weaker year for global dairy trade generally — international dairy prices have pulled back sharply from their 2022 highs, and cheese in particular has felt it as exportable supply has built up across producing regions — and you get a soft market on nearly every axis at once, not just one commodity having a bad month.
What this means depending on where you sit
If you're a wholesale-focused maker selling into a commodity-adjacent channel, this is the kind of stretch where your per-pound return can slip even if your volume holds steady. It's worth pulling your last few settlement statements side by side rather than trusting memory — a seven-week slide adds up faster than it feels like it does day to day, and it's easy to miss the cumulative drop when you're only looking at one check at a time.
If you sell direct — farmers market, farm store, subscription box — the spot market barely touches you, but it changes your competitive set. Grocery cheese cases price off these same benchmarks, and a softer wholesale market can make a nine-dollar grocery wedge look like better value next to your fourteen-dollar wheel for a shopper who isn't thinking about the difference in how it was made. That's not a reason to cut your price. It's a reason to make sure your case card or your table sign says something about why yours costs what it does, because the shopper standing in front of you is comparing numbers whether or not you are.
If you're a distributor or a buyer, a soft spot market is often when a maker with thin cash reserves gets nervous and starts discounting ahead of where you'd expect. It's a fair moment to check in with your smaller accounts rather than wait for them to call you with a problem, and a five-minute call now can save both of you a harder conversation in July.
None of this is a forecast — spot dairy markets move on weather, herd decisions, and export demand in ways that reverse without much warning, and a June turn wouldn't be unusual after a run like this. But whatever your channel, this is a good week to look at your numbers rather than your gut. Our Membership & Outreach Committee can point wholesale-side members toward peers who've been through a similar stretch before, if a second set of eyes on your numbers would help you decide what, if anything, to change right now.
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.