Dairy Insights: Heard Mentality

Dairy buyers and sellers from around the world gathered at Gulfood in Dubai last week. Vipin Kumar, StoneX Vice President of Middle East Dairy was there and shares what he heard.

The U.S. dairy markets rallied in the lead up to the big IDFA conference. Dustin Winston and I were both at the conference and the sentiment was less bearish than expected but we did have a few bullish take-aways.

Lumpy Skin Disease continues to spread in Europe, Bluetongue was recently found in Northern Ireland for the first time and bird flu was found in dairy cows for the first time in Wisconsin. Could these diseases suddenly slow milk production growth faster than the market is expecting?

We've seen sharp drops in dairy prices, is there any reason to be bullish right now? When will the market start to turn higher?

Market talk at Gulf Foods, one of the largest global food trade fairs, was mostly bearish, centered on when is the dairy market going to bottom out.

U.S. dairy farmers have been earning more and more of their income from the sale of calves and slaughter cows over the past 3 years. Gavin McPherson joins me to talk about what drove the cattle market to record high levels and what he makes of the 10% selloff we saw in the second half of October.

Dustin Winston was in Australia and Singapore and attended the SGX-NZX conference and talks about what he heard about milk production for New Zealand and Australia as well as Chinese demand.

StoneX has announced a new partnership to add dairy prices reported by Expana to StoneX Plus and launch OTC swaps that will settle to some of those prices. With demand for WPC and fat filled milk powder (FFMP) the industry has been looking for ways to manage the price risk with these products.

We held our annual EU outlook conference in Dublin Ireland last week and the sentiment was very bearish for the European dairy market. The supply side has received a lot of attention, but demand also seems to be softening. I talk to John Lancaster about the conference and supply and demand dynamics.

Summary: The CME spot butter price fell 17% during August hitting the lowest levels of 2025. I talk with Dave Kurzawski about the declines in butter and whether cheese prices are next.

Summary: We've seen OTC cheese and butter prices for the fourth quarter drop about 10% from their recent highs as milk production in Europe, and elsewhere, turns out better than expected and demand may be softening. Fearghal McCabe talks about the EU market and whether we'll see prices rebound as buyers come back from summer holidays.

GDT results last week were mixed with AMF prices up but butter prices down and WMP prices counter seasonally increasing. Nate Donnay talks with Niall Alsafi about GDT and what is driving the divergent price action.

We can now add Lumpy Skin Disease (LSD) to the list of diseases impacting dairy cows in Europe along with Bluetongue and Foot and Mouth (FMD). John Lancaster shares details on the discovery of LSD in late June, the spread since then and what we should expect going forward.

CME spot cheese and butter prices have rallied almost 40 cents a pound and 30 cents a pound from their recent lows to their peaks last week. Dave Kurzawski joins me to talk about the market move and what is driving it.

We've seen a significant rally in U.S. spot cheese and future prices and some significant strength in deferred EU OTC prices. Desmond Strelzow joins me to talk about the EU market and I talk through the drivers behind the U.S. strength and where I think the market is going.

EEX butter futures have been trending a little lower, but every time they dip, buyers seem to show up. We've seen a similar pattern for cheese but EEX SMP has been on a straight trend lower. I talk to Fearghal McCabe about the EU markets and whether they can stay at a big premium to the U.S.

YiFan Li comes on to talk about the strength we've seen in GDT/SGX prices and NBS data suggesting milk production in China was up 1.7% during the first quarter.

This week I talk to Dave Kurzawski about the U.S. spot and futures markets and the impact that tariffs or threats of tariffs have had.

During March there were 2 new cases of FMD in Hungary and 5 new ones in Slovakia. Florian Hildebrand joins me to discuss the spread of FDM and what we know about the impacts on the dairy markets.

A second case of foot and mouth disease has been discovered in Europe and John Lancaster discusses what he saw and heard around weather and milk production in New Zealand and a partnership we have to bring a focus on margins and hedging to NZ dairy farmers.