The cheese market continued its slow, steady climb for the week as demand seems to be pretty solid ahead of the Memorial Day weekend. Barrels on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange gained 6 cents for the week and blocks were 3.75 cents higher than last Friday.
The monthly Cold Storage Report from the National Ag Statistics Service shows cheese stocks continue to build. As of the end April total cheese in storage, 1.011 billion pounds, up 2 percent from the end of March and 8 percent more than a year ago. American cheese stocks increased 2 percent from March, Swiss stocks were down 3 percent and Other Natural Cheese was up 2 percent. By the way, March stocks were revised a bit lower to 994.5 million pounds. Preliminary estimates a month ago were over a billion pounds.
Cooperatives Working Together (CWT) accepted one bid from Darigold and one bid from Land O’Lakes for export assistance on a total of 108.4 metric tons (239,000 pounds) of Cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese to the Middle East and Asia. The product will be delivered in June and July 2010.
Since CWT reactivated the Export Assistance program on March 18, 2010, it has assisted members in making export sales of cheese totaling 15,652 metric tons (34.5 million pounds) to 17 countries on four continents.
Monthly Livestock Slaughter report from NASS shows 235,000 dairy cows went to slaughter in April, 21,000 less than shipped in March but 20,000 more than went to market last April. For the first four months of the year, 946,000 dairy cows have been slaughtered, 32,000 less than the same period last year.
The Class I base price for June is $15.28, up $1.48 from May and the highest it has been since January of 2009.
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