Volatility continues to permeate the dairy industry as the world economy contemplates a return to "normal."

CME spot cheddar is the most pronounced example, having rocketed up to $2.40 at the time this recording.

Why? T3 explains how it's a symptom of an environment where the entire industry is guessing.

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

Ted: Maybe we ought to start the discussion by someone telling us why the cheese market is doing what it's doing.

T3: Okay.

Anna: Good luck.

T3: I'm assuming you mean me.

Ted: Yeah.

T3: So, how about we use the analogy of we're on a roller coaster and we just went down the big hill and now we're going up the big hill.

Ted: It's gotten much higher than I thought it would ever go. I thought the thing would be ready to crash at $1.90.

T3: Yeah. I think everybody's kind of in the same boat. To me, it's a combination of factors all hitting at the same time. You still have retail sales running at 20% to 30% above normal, you now have foodservice distributors refilling the pipeline that emptied out when COVID-19 started. Well, now, restaurants are starting to open back up and they're trying to refill the pipeline in preparation for everything going back to normal. And I just talked to one of the big cheese mozzarella manufacturers here late last week who told me his foodservice orders are running at 120% of what they normally would this time of the year. In addition to that, you have the food box program, the USDA Food Box Program, which is quickly becoming a debacle because a number of the winners of the program did not properly calculate or hedge the cheese and butter portion of their purchases to put the program together to deliver to, you know, the charities. So, when they bid that price, they bid it at a fixed price. Now, there was an interview with one of the larger regional foodservice distributors about a week ago, I'm going to paraphrase here.

But basically, what this owner said was that they bid on the Food Box Program and they were told their bid was too high. And what he said was he goes, he believed the winners of many of the bids did not have their head around what the true costs were to put the whole program together. And that they may have been underestimating what the cost of some of the products were, specifically cheese and butter on the dairy side of things. And his comment was U.S. Foodservice, Sysco, Performance Food Group, all bid on the program and all were told their bids were too high because there's no way that some of the winners of this program could possibly put together some of these boxes at some of the costs that they bid if they won the program and these guys didn't. So, that has to be very concerning. And that was before the cheese price raised to what is now $2.40. But you add that demand on top of foodservice distribution demand running at a 120% of normal because they're refilling the pipeline on top of retail demand, that's still running at about 120% of normal. And that's the recipe for cheese market that is raised from $1.01 to $2.40 in the span of a little more than three weeks and is likely to keep going higher before it comes back down.

One of the things that I think also plays into this is the fact that production planning, distribution planning, you know, all of these big companies, whether you're a foodservice distributor or a restaurant group, restaurant chains, or cheese manufacturers, they all have planning departments. So,