In this week’s episode of The Milk Check, we strap in for a wild ride. From tariff chaos to spring flush milk surpluses, the market is anything but predictable.

Join Ted Jacoby and the team of experts as we cover key topics, including:

The spring milk flush and its impact on processing plants

Cream demand firming up but still long

Butter market volatility and how cream shortages are affecting prices

Tariffs and how they're impacting the international dairy trade

Our team of experts break down the current dairy climate and offer insights on navigating these turbulent waters.

Listen now to The Milk Check episode 76: Tariff talk takes dairy on a wild ride.

The Jacoby Team:

Brianne Breed, senior vice president, cheese trading

Diego Carvallo, director, dry dairy ingredient trading

Gus Jacoby, president, fluid dairy ingredients & dairy support

Jacob Menge, vice president of risk management & trade strategy

Joe Maixner, director of sales, dairy ingredients

Josh White, vice president, dairy ingredients

Miguel Aragón, director of international cheese sales, Latin America

Mike Brown, vice president, dairy market intelligence

Ted Jacoby III, CEO & president, cheese, butter & dry ingredients

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

Ted Jacoby III: Welcome everybody. It is April 11th, 2025. We've had a lot going on in the last couple of weeks. Trump initiated some tariffs, took some tariffs off, and raised some tariffs. I think we landed in various different spots when the dust started to settle, and I'm pretty sure that the dust hasn't settled yet. So, this market discussion could be completely out of date by the time we get back on Monday.

I've asked a lot of my traders to join us for this discussion. My brother Gus is representing the Fluid Group and talking a little about milk and cream. We've got Diego with international sales and non-fat. We've got Brianne here to talk about cheese. We've got Joe here to talk about butter, and we've got Josh here to talk about whey, as well as Miguel to help Bri with cheese. And then we've got Mike Brown joining us.

And so we're just going to go around the horn and talk about our various dairy products. Obviously, we can't avoid the topic of tariffs today. Let's start where the milk starts, and start with milk. Gus, what's going on in milk right now?

Gus Jacoby: Well, we're in the middle of the spring flush. So, in areas like the Mideast, Northeast, and even areas on the Eastern Atlantic, you have some pretty long milk. But an interesting dichotomy for the discussion is that there are areas of the country that aren't so long. It's mostly areas where a lot of milk-processing capacity has been added, like the I-29 corridor up in South Dakota or down the Southwest.

Those areas aren't quite as tight, but nonetheless, where it is long, for example, in the Mideast, there have been a number of plant shutdowns for periods that have made it really long for certain stretches. You add in some higher components, and you're in for some interesting times right here in the middle of April.

Ted Jacoby III: So we're about a week away from Easter. Do we think things will get even longer over the Easter weekend before they maybe start to clean up a little bit?

Gus Jacoby: Some plants that were down are coming back online, but not all of them, so I think you will have a little bit of both. It's hard to figure out exactly how long we'll be over Easter. But I think it's safe to say that you'll likely have enough plant shutdowns during that holiday weekend, and it'll still be ugly.

Ted Jacoby III: And what about cream? Cream has been the bane of many people's existence this year, especially in the Midwest. Is it still ugly? Or is it starting to get better?

Gus Jacoby: It's not as ugly as it was.