Nate Donnay is the director of dairy market insight at StoneX Financial Inc. He has been applying his interest in large complicated systems and statistical analysis to the international and U.S. dairy markets since 2005.
Exporting U.S. dairy is going to get harder before it gets a lot easier. Europe, the largest exporter of dairy products, is facing a recession and a tough winter for consumers. The expectation is that dairy demand will suffer just as milk production in the region has started to improve. That will push more of Europe’s milk supply onto the world market and create headwinds for U.S. exporters. But longer-term, milk production growth in the European Union (EU) and New Zealand (NZ) looks constrained by tightening environmental regulations, which will open new opportunities for the United States.