By  E. W. Lang

Block cheese gained 17 cents per cwt. this week while barrels gained eight.  Butter lost six cents.  Milk-Feed Indices are up $1.30 per cwt. for the week, owing to lower grain prices and higher Class III Milk Futures for the rest of this year.

The upswing in cheese price is due to recent, increased exports.  During May, exports from the United States were 19% higher than April and just a little under under April of 2018, the all-time high month for dairy solids exports from the U.S. to foreign buyers, largely China then and now.   Milk price in China right now is something close to $30 per cwt., and they are building industrial dairies at a fast rate.  It's unfortunate that they just can't count on us as an ever dependable trading partner, because they can buy cheese here cheaper than they can make it there, mostly.

U.S. farmers often blame international trade for their own financial lot in life.  A common, foreign enemy is a comfortable, anonymous target, and a lot of Americans are clueless as toward what free trade can do and doesn't do, particularly for and to the least of us. 

Twenty-one years ago, I hosted here the Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States, who was most eager to buy anything farm or food.  We all know someone, or the parents of someone, who didn't come home alive from Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.  I can see two of their graves from my mail box.  Yes, that war was a tragedy of inconceivable proportions.  That said, free trade with a real, perceived or former enemy can advance peace over time, in part by efficiently redistributing goods and services. This improves the economic lot of all lives, though in a rather cruel, free-market manner.

I should note here that our free-trade model may actually be the most cruel and inhumane economic model in the history of the world, except for every other market system that has ever been attempted by human kind.

And now for something completely different.  California milk producers have voted by a wide margin to keep their quota system.  That whole quota thing is a little bit of a secret aberration here in the U. S.  It is also just opposite of the way California farmers have operated in the last 100 years, leading the nation in scalable, industrial food production.  Still, milk price out there is largely a function of butter values, thus pretty miserable, so I'm not surprised by the vote.

Average of Class III Futures for the rest of this year is $17.60 per cwt., up 33 cents for the week.  Class IV Milk Futures average $16.10 per cwt. for July to December, down 50 cents since Friday, last.   For reference, July Class III was $24 per cwt a year ago, Class IV was $14 per cwt.

Interest rates decreased a little this week, and land prices continue to increase.  An 80 acre parcel in Iowa sold for $12,400 per acre a couple weeks ago, after an auction buyer rejected it in November after bidding $8150 per acre.  It was the exact same parcel, same auction company, same terms and manner of sale, but an increase of 52% in value over six months.