After several months of declines in milk production, cheese and butter prices skyrocketed in March, and both block and cheese prices at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange smashed previous records.
A Saint Patrick's Day rally took the block cheese price to $1.975 per pound, a quarter-penny per pound above the previous record price which had stood since August 1999. The block price broke the $2.00 mark a couple days later, with barrel prices following suit the next week, as this article was being prepared. Butter climbed to $2.315 at about the same time.