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Cheese and butter stocks decline

Cheese and butter continue to increase on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.  Barrels added a quarter-cent, blocks 1.25 cents and butter jumped 6.25 cents on Friday.

For the week, cash cheese barrels up 5 cents, blocks up 4.25 cents, butter up 16.25 cents, nonfat dry milk down 9.75 cents.  Class III futures for August increased 7 cents, September slipped 11 cents, October gained $1.34 and February increased 8 cents.

The monthly Cold Storage Report from USDA shows 1.05 billion pounds of cheese in the nation’s warehouses as of July 31^st.  That is just slightly higher than June but 8 percent less than a year ago.  American cheese stocks were up 1 percent from June to 660 million pounds but down 6 percent from July of 2013.

Butter in cold storage totaled just over 52 million pounds as of July 31^st. down 9 percent from June and 41 percent lower than last July.