By  E. W. Lang

November Class III Milk Futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange lost $1.11 per cwt. this week to close out trading at $18.50 per cwt.  Block cheese lost 13 cents this week and barrels lost four cents.  December Class III lost 97  cents per cwt. 

Class IV Futures generally increased with non-fat dry milk at contract high prices and butter at $1.94 per lb.  October Class IV is at $17.05 per cwt and the next several months are in the upper $18 range.

USDA has announced that the Dairy Margin Coverage subsidy will be triggered at the $7 mark for herds signed up for qualifying production in September.

Spot milk was running at Class to $1 per cwt. over class last week, according to UDSA's Dairy Market News.  DMN further reports that milk production is "increasing" and "improving" in all regions of the country.  I am guessing that lower corn and soy costs have prompted some producers to feed just a little bit more grain which over the national herd can amount to a lot of additional milk.  Fluid milk bottling orders, however, are "decreasing."  This, again, according to Dairy Market News, and troubling news, it is.

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS), which I am guessing is a government agency, has been researching if humans can get Covid from their farm animals.  This has been a project going on since February, 2020, and they have decided that no, we can't get Covid from our cows, pigs, sheep and chickens, whatever.  This makes me wonder why livestock exhibitors at the various shows were forced to wear masks.  If our show stock can't give us the Covid, masks seem like a silly mandate.

That said, since the ARS results were based on statistical, scientific research by a government agency, most of us can assume the science was bad, the research was rigged, they were lying and it was a good thing we had our masks on in the show ring because farm animals obviously transmit Covid, regardless of what the federal government and scientists tell us.  

I guess White Tail Deer can actually get Covid, but we don't show them.  Well, some people might, who knows.  Show people and the show industry are peculiar in a host of ways.