Articles by Nate Donnay

With so many pandemic related variables, it's been a balancing act for U.S. dairy exports. At this point, anything is possible.

We all talk about dairy demand as if we know what we're talking about. If you are trying to sell cheese to an importer in Mexico and you sell them 10% more than you did last year, is that good demand? What if you had to cut your price in half from last year to make that sale? Is that still good demand?

I promise not to use the words unprecedented, uncertain, essential or new normal. I never want to hear those words again. The main part of my job is tracking, modeling and forecasting the supply, demand and prices of dairy products around the world.

On Jan. 15, 2020, the United States and China signed "phase one" of a trade deal. The countries' relationship has been trending downward for the past two years, and the deal does mark a possible inflection point.

The tricky parts is figuring out whether the 10% drop in prices today was the blow-off bottom or the 10% drop tomorrow will be the bottom. Very strong retail sales in the US are keeping physical supplies in balance or a little tight, but consumers are now stocked up and the retail side will cool down.

The state of the export market for U.S. dairy products is mixed: It depends on the dairy product that you’re exporting and on the destination of the product.

There have been some interesting shifts in the global trade of dairy products that aren't apparent on the surface. Chinese milk-equivalent import growth slowed from 13% in the first quarter of 2019 to an estimated 1.7% in the second quarter.

The USDA releases an estimate of milk production for the United States every month, at least during months when the government is operating.

Yet again, European Union (EU) intervention stocks of skim milk powder (SMP) have effectively been drawn down to zero. When this happened in 2007, EU and U.S. prices ran up to new record highs.