Dairy markets have seen a whirlwind of highs and lows throughout 2021. With spring in the air, producers are preparing for the annual spring flush, an event where more fresh animals enter the milking herd and milk production sees a spike.
Brian Doherty, a dairy analyst with Total Farm Marketing, spoke with AgDay anchor Clinton Griffiths to provide a quick snapshot as to what dairy markets might look like throughout the rest of 2021.
“The dairy industry has had some pretty big price rallies along the way as well as price drops,” Doherty says. “So, it’s been the management of those that have been the challenge to producers to manage that perceived inventory or actually inventory into the rally,”
“It looks like all arrows point to increased production,” Doherty adds. “When you have demand driven markets, those are very finicky. They look very strong at one point and then the demand backs away. So, you’ve got this COVID thing out there along with higher feed costs, and that’s shaken up the markets. However, it looks like a lot of the dairy producers were proactive. So, they were buying feeds lower this fall and winter than what they are priced at now.
“For right now, we’ve got to still look at penciling in higher production numbers into the spring and into the early summer,” he notes. “We just don’t think the beef prices are high enough to say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get rid of these cows and we’ve got to cull heifers.’ So there will probably be more production.”
