$10 BILLION IN ECONOMIC ASSISTANCE will be issued directly to agricultural producers by the USDA through the Emergency Commodity Assistance Program (ECAP) for the 2024 crop year. Administered by USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), FSA will send pre-filled applications to producers who submitted acreage reports for 2024 eligible ECAP commodities.
JANUARY CHEESE PRODUCTION IN THE U.S. WAS UP 0.8% from January 2024, finishing at 1.210 billion pounds. This is also 0.7% above the 1.202 billion pounds produced in December.
CHEESE YIELDS CLIMBED TO HISTORIC HIGHS as butterfat levels have skyrocketed to 4.23% in the past 15 years and protein reached 3.29% in 2024. These improvements have driven a jump of more than a pound in cheese yield per hundredweight of milk in the past decade. See chart below.
TIGHT SUPPLIES OF FEEDER CATTLE and trade uncertainty for live cattle imports from Canada and Mexico are driving prices higher. USDA reports that the five-area marketing region of feedlots in Texas/Oklahoma/New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and Iowa/Minnesota have seen early March daily prices range from $197 to $201 per cwt.
U.S. DAIRY CATTLE SLAUGHTER IN 2025 REMAINS BELOW the comparable starting pace of the previous two years. Despite beef prices at long-term highs, slaughter through Week 9 is down 6.4% compared to 2024 and has dropped 20.2% compared to 2023.
AFTER WEAK PERFORMANCE IN 2024, South American milk exporters have started this year on a stronger note. Favorable weather and higher margins have driven January production up year-over-year by 5.6% in Argentina and 2.2% in Uruguay. This is the largest January milk volume on record for those two countries.
THE U.S. WAS A NET IMPORTER OF BEEF IN JANUARY as imports reached a record 608 million pounds — a 21% jump compared to January 2024. January beef exports totaled 230 million pounds.
AMERICAN FOODS GROUP (AFG) announced the closure of their beef harvest operations in Yankton, S.D. The final day of operations was March 15. All other AFG facilities will remain operational.
AS THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION remains in a legal battle over the freezing of foreign aid and resulting impact to U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a Republican-led bill would move the Food for Peace Program to USDA. The 70-year-old program has fed more than 4 billion people in 150 countries and provides American farmers additional marketing opportunities.
