What will shape the dairy industry in 2025? Are you ready for it?

In this episode of The Milk Check, we tackle the big question: what’s ahead for the dairy market in 2025? Spoiler alert: There’s no shortage of opinions—or uncertainty.

🐮 Heifer shortages vs. USDA projections: are we heading for a reality check?

🐄How will shifting cow populations reshape regional American production?

🧈 What is going on with butter? What's ahead for 2025?

🌏 Will export demand stabilize or shake up the market?

Our team debates critical factors impacting the year ahead, including herd dynamics, regional processing capacity, and export competition.

From farmers to Futures buyers, this is your go-to episode for staying ahead of the dairy market’s evolution.

🎙️ Listen now to gain insights about cows, cream, and commerce on this episode of The Milk Check.

Intro (with music):

Welcome to The Milk Check, a podcast from T.C. Jacoby and Company, where we share market insights and analysis with dairy farmers in mind.

Ted Jacoby, III (T3):

Welcome everybody to our January 2025 version of the Milk Check podcast. Today, we will do a bit of a market outlook for 2025, and I've got most of our traders on with me to share their thoughts on what might be coming down the pike. That would include my brother Gus, who runs our fluid group; Greg Scheer, who's head of our milk division; Joe Maixner, who handles our butter desk; Don Street, who does a lot of our analysis in terms of milk production, heifer supply numbers, cold storage, those kinds of things. Josh White, head of our dairy ingredients, runs our whey protein desk. Diego Carvallo, head of our international sales and runs our nonfat book; Jacob Menge, head of risk management; and Brianne Breed, head of our cheese group. Today, the group of us will get together and talk about the different segments of the industry and what we think is in store for us in 2025. So, thanks for listening. I think you'll enjoy this podcast.

We have been talking a lot internally about the heifer supply and the fact that there just may not be enough heifers to grow the milk supply, but I was talking to someone whose opinion I think pretty highly of the other day, and he told me that he knows of 60,000 cows that are going on new dairy farms in 2025, which makes me wonder if what we've been talking about with the heifer supply is true or if maybe the numbers we're getting from the USDA are wrong. Do you think the cows are really going to be out there? Do you think we'll be able to grow our milk supply in 2025, or do you think the shortage of heifers is real?

Greg Scheer:

Well, I think some areas may have a shortage of heifers. Obviously, some big farms have planned expansions that may not be counted in that number, but there are still tight supplies of heifers. Some of the bigger farms have their own replacements available. So, I do think it'll limit how much milk production can grow.

Gus Jacoby:

Yeah, it’s hard to argue with what Greg just said. I mean, the economics are there for Garmin to continue to go to beef, and therefore, we don't foresee the heifer supply growing, only shortening. Now, that doesn't mean that some larger farms that have some affiliations with calf ranches can't manage their heifer supplies as they need to grow into some new farms or current farms that require more production for new plant capacity coming on in their regions, but I don't think there's any doubt that we're going to have a limiting factor on cows that puts a lid on it.

To be clear, Teddy, we had a big influx of cows in the middle of the year when some new capacity came on in the southwest. We only ended the year with 20,000 cows up, including over 300,000 fewer cows culled. So, to keep the cow numbers relatively the same, we must continue culling fewer cows. We're just going to find out whether that's something we can get away with for the foreseeable future because the herd will...