Dairy Markets Week in Review
Cash block cheese closed the Martin Luther King Day-holiday shortened week up a half-cent to $1.0750 per pound, but 57 1/2-cents below a year ago. Barrel closed at $1.10, up a penny on the week but 65 cents below a year ago. Twenty one cars of block traded hands and one of barrel. The NASS U.S. average block price fell to $1.2230, down 12.4 cents. Barrel averaged $1.2630, down 1.7 cents.
Butter closed Friday at $1.1025, down a penny on the week, and 13 cents below a year ago. Eight cars were sold. NASS butter averaged $1.0772, down 4.2 cents. NASS nonfat dry milk averaged 83.12 cents, down 0.4 cent. Dry whey averaged 16.92 cents, down 0.2 cent.
Price support purchases for the week included 7.7 million pounds of nonfat dry milk and 1.1 million of butter, raising the cumulative totals to 142 million and 1.5 million respectively. USDA announced that it will not use a private third party to resell nonfat dry milk purchased under the price support program as was announced in early December. National Milk has thus withdrawn its legal challenge to the earlier announcement.
Provided courtesy of Dairyline.