Two things are true about milk supply this week, and they're pulling in different directions. The seasonal bottling push that comes with schools reopening has mostly run its course, which normally frees up more raw milk for cheese vats. At the same time, several members running plants have told us they're still short-staffed, and a short-staffed plant can't always take advantage of milk that's available even when the price is right.
That mismatch is showing up in the spot market. Members buying and selling milk outside their standing contracts this month have reported a wide spread — from roughly a dollar and a quarter under Class price up to a dollar over it at cheese plants, depending on the day and the region. A federal dairy market report covering mid-September echoes what members are telling us directly: some plants are scheduling maintenance and pulling in extra loads while they have the chance, and others are simply running seven days a week despite being short a shift, because the milk is there and the demand hasn't slowed enough to justify turning any of it away.
What's actually driving the staffing side
This isn't a milk problem; it's a people problem, and it's been building all year. A few plant managers we've talked to have raised wages to hold onto a full shift, and it's helping, but it hasn't closed the gap. If you're running a facility and finding it hard to keep a second shift fully staffed, you're not the only one, and it's worth flagging to us — we're hearing enough of these stories now that it may be worth a dedicated session at the Membership & Outreach Committee's next call.
The practical effect for members further down the chain is less about price and more about lead time. A distributor or wholesale buyer used to getting a delivery within a set window may find that window sliding by a day or two, not because there isn't cheese, but because there isn't always a hand free to load it. If your fall ordering assumes the same turnaround you had in the spring, this might be the month to build in a little slack, and it's worth asking your supplier directly whether their own staffing is stable before you commit to a tight delivery date.
Reading the spread instead of the headline number
We'd caution against treating either end of that spot-price spread as the "real" number. A dollar over Class at one plant on one day tells you that plant needed milk badly enough to pay for it; a dollar and a quarter under at another tells you the opposite. Neither is a forecast. What's useful is watching whether the spread narrows over the next few weeks — a narrower spread usually means supply and staffing are settling into a more predictable rhythm, and a wider one means don't count on this month's price holding into next.
For members setting contracts for the fourth quarter, the steadier approach several of you have described to us is pricing off your own cost basis and treating any favorable spot number as a bonus, not a baseline. That's the same advice we gave when milk production was running ahead of pace back in August; it holds just as well now that the picture has flipped toward tighter plant capacity rather than tighter milk supply.
It's also worth separating the two problems in your own planning. A milk shortage and a labor shortage call for different responses — one is about locking in supply, the other is about building slack into your delivery expectations. Right now we're mostly looking at the second one, which is a little easier to plan around once you know that's what you're dealing with.
If your creamery or plant is managing its own staffing crunch and you've found something that's actually worked — a shift schedule, a training pipeline, anything short of just raising wages further — send it our way. We'd like to compile a short list of practical approaches for members heading into the busier fall production stretch, and the best material for that always comes from members telling us what they actually tried.
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.