The director of the Center for Dairy Profitability remains optimistic milk prices will go up, especially next year.
Mark Stephenson with the University of Wisconsin agrees with the latest WASDE report predicting milk prices will reach between $17.55 and $18.55 a hundredweight in 2018. “I think that that’s quite possible. We’ve had strong domestic sales and quite honestly right now we’re seeing our export opportunities increase.”
Stephenson says there’s some positive movement in the market now. “We just got a global dairy report, trade report, from New Zealand that’s indicating increased product prices for things like butter, and of course, we’ve seen those in our own Chicago Mercantile Exchange spot markets here in the last few days.”
And he says producers should see some improvement in milk prices before next year. “We are going to be in the 17-dollar range for Class III in the next few months, and we’ve got room for growth later on.”
Stephenson says dairy margins are also getting better, moving closer to the 10-dollar-a-hundredweight range, where he expects them to stay for the rest of the year.
Source: Brownfield Ag News