Production of ice cream soared to a 69.2-million-gallon volume on the May Dairy Products Report released ahead of the 4th of July holiday. That is a 7.1% increase in production from May 2025. Even last week, producers of ice cream were one of the key drivers in the weekly regional update, pulling large volumes of cream for producing America’s favorite summertime treat.
Not only was production higher, but overall advertisements were up 58% for conventional dairy and 42% for organic with the bulk of the money being spent on ice creams campaigns.
Ice cream wasn’t the only frozen treat to see a jump in production. Frozen yogurt climbed 2.7% from May of 2025 and Sherbet reached 1.95 million gallons of production, climbing an astounding 16.1% from last year. While that total volume may be small, it was the largest year over year increase for any dairy product.
All of this comes at a time when we see milk production on farm begin to decline as temperatures heat up. Last week was no exception as a massive heat dome covered most of the Midwest leading to scorching temperatures and heat stress for milk cows across the country.
Prior to the heat of last week, the East and West regions saw a decline in farm milk production with volumes slowly declining as summer begins but the Midwest was steady. It is anticipated that production will see a rapid decline in the coming weeks, especially since the 6 to10 day forecast shows another scorcher coming soon.
Cheese also saw a spike in demand, mainly focused in the Midwest region with holiday driven products as well as value added products, as well as an increase in demand from Mexico. As far as the May Dairy Products Report, cheese production overall increased 2% year-over-year and 1.1% from April 2026. Italian type cheese led the way with 560 million pounds, an increase of 6.5% from last year.
The most notable change from the dairy products report was with Skim Milk Powder. It was the only substantial decline in production from last year, coming in at 29.4 million pounds, a decrease of 39.7 % from May 2025.
Dairy markets have been hard to get much excitement as Class III seems to be on a long children’s slide, falling lower and lower as the year drags on. Class IV showed some life this spring with export demand but still struggling with the large availability of products, much like most dairy products, it is hard to overcome the large production numbers we have been seeing over the last couple of years.
Maybe heat waves will be the factor needed to see a spike in the market, whether it be at the cost of cow comfort or in the sheer volume of ice cream scoops eaten. All I know for sure is that I’ll do my part in consuming as many frozen treats as I can in the meantime.
Sarah Jungman is a commodity broker with AgMarket.Net and AgDairy, the dairy division of John Stewart & Associates Inc. (JSA). JSA is a full-service commodity brokerage firm based out of St. Joseph, MO. Sarah’s office is located in Winterset, Iowa and she may be reached at 515-272-5799 or through the website www.agmarket.net.
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