By  E. W. Lang

The USDA announced price components for November, and the Dairy Margin Coverage program should come in at $9.14 per cwt.  This should trigger a subsidy for producers signed up for coverage at the $9.50 level.

Nearby Class III Milk Futures increased in response to CME cheese prices this week.  For the month of December, Class III Futures for January to June 2022 are up $1.77 per cwt., after cheese gained 13 cents per lb.  Butter, meanwhile, gained 31 cents per lb. in December.  Class IV Milk for the first half of 2022 averages $21.30 per cwt.   The Class III Milk-Feed Index for those same six months is just short of $9.50 per cwt., so milk margins are approaching a level that offer some financial relief to producers.

Class III and IV Futures are at contract highs.   Calendar 2022 futures average, strangely, $20.22 per cwt. on Class III and a dollar more for Class IV.  Block cheese ended the week at $1.98 per lb., barrels are $1.71 and butter ended the week, thus the year, at $2.44 per lb.

This past calendar year was somewhat of an outlier that began with an attempted insurrection in D.C. and ended with a country divided by response and reaction to an abruptly dynamic virus.  In addition, 2021 was peppered throughout with government assistance, subsidy or welfare - depending on one's perspective - to many and all, farmers and otherwise, rich and poor.      

The new year is beginning much the same.  Unity and common fellowship in the United States will one day resurrect in the form of a common enemy, much like the terrorist attacks of two decades ago, the military victory over Iraq in the 90s.  Or the peaceful, economic defeat of Soviet communism in the 1980s.  Societies are funny that way. 

I suspect that government socialism will continue to creep, the middle class will continue to be hollowed out.  Also, we white male Christian types will continue to be the most affected by, and resistant to, social and economic change in all its forms.   

Oddly, in any era after the printing press and before the internets, the Covid virus would have been a common enemy to all Americans and unifying in a similar manner to polio in the neighborhood and communists in the federal government. 

During most of world history, unity was fostered with slaughter and/or conquest by the stronger, of the weaker.  This was largely in the name of any one of the three major religions against one or both of the remaining.  All three have done this; one still does.  

So maybe things aren't as bad here in the U. S. as we self-anointed commentators would like to think.