Global market keeps Wisconsin milk prices fluid

By Ann Meyer
Contributing Writer

NORTHEAST WIS. – If you’re confused about the tariffs, you’re in good company.

“Have they even taken effect?” asked Andy Lefebre, who runs BerryLand in Abrams, a third-generation family farm. While Lefebre’s grandfather exited the dairy milking business in the 1980s, BerryLand has shifted gears a couple of times and now produces asparagus, strawberries and pumpkins on six acres.

“I know prices have gone up. I don’t know if it’s due to tariffs or natural inflation like a bubble,” Lefebre said Monday.

Like most Oconto County farms, BerryLand sells locally. Most farmers in Marinette and Oconto counties don’t have to export or import products themselves to feel the weight of foreign policies affecting domestic prices, including Class III milk prices, which have declined from a year ago.

“We feel like we’ve been getting ripped off,” said Brian Reisinger, president of Hilltop Strategies LLC in Madison.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture price of Federal Milk Order Class III milk per hundredweight was at $17.32 in July, down from $19.79 a year ago. Prices slipped from $20.34 per hundredweight in January to $18.82 in June.

Lower milk prices may have benefitted Wisconsin cheesemakers.

Cheese volume sales were up about 7% in the first five months of the calendar year, with 533 million pounds of U.S. cheese sold abroad, according to the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association.

About 5% of U.S. milkfat and 22% of U.S. skim milk solids were exported in 2024, according to Dr. Andy Novakovic in the July 2025 Hoard’s Dairymen.

How tariffs will affect Wisconsin farmers and cheesemakers isn’t the easiest question to answer, said Jaime Castaneda, executive vice president of policy development and strategy at the U.S. Dairy Export Council and National Milk Producers Federation.

“There are a lot of announcements and statements that are political statements,” he said. “The president has announced there are going to be zero dairy tariffs” for Canada and Mexico.

“Everything that was negotiated in the U.S. Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) is exempt, but everything else still [has] tariffs,” Castaneda said. Steel and aluminum tariffs affect the cost of building or expanding a cheesemaking plant, he said.

So far, U.S. cheese prices have by and large remained competitive.

The price of cheese barrels closed at $1.7100 in late July, up from the weekly average of $1.6660, and 40-pound blocks closed at $1.7050, compared with the weekly average of $1.6790 the USDA’s Dairy Marketing News reported.

The Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association announced a Dairy Trade Policy Platform on July 23 that included tariff relief for processing equipment and support for global food programs that include U.S. dairy products. The organization also supports “export readiness” for smaller dairy businesses.

“Members seek productive trade agreements, diminished non-tariff barriers and the end to protectionist attempts to claw back commonly used cheese names, so the U.S. can sell safe, high-quality dairy products around the world,” said Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association Executive Director John Umhoefer said in the July 23 WCMA Notes.

On July 28, the White House announced the Cooperation Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade between the United States and the European Union (EU), which aims to increase U.S. exports and reduce the goods-trade deficit with the EU.

“The EU will remove significant tariffs, including the elimination of all EU tariffs on U.S. industrial goods exported to the EU, creating enormous opportunities for American-made and American-grown goods to compete and win in Europe,” according to a White House statement.

Over the long run, opening the global markets for U.S. goods should provide new customers for American dairy foods and ingredients, Reisinger said.

In the short term, however, some are concerned about politics affecting volumes and prices.

Even without dairy tariffs to contend with, U.S. farmers are affected by global markets. “Farmers exist in a cross-cutting set of winds,” Reisinger said, and they may be impacted by developments occurring on the global stage.

Canada is unique with its supply management and “super protection” of dairy prices, Castaneda told a Peshtigo Times reporter. “They like their high prices, but they produce milk on the basis of what they need out of butterfat. There is demand for butterfat that’s higher than for milkfat solids. They produce more milk than is necessary, then have to dump nonfat milk solids. It’s very unfair,” he said.

“The U.S. is an extremely competitive player in world dairy markets,” Castaneda said in a statement in July. “However, Canada’s actions are one of the major policy factors undermining fair competition in those markets.”

In speaking before the U.S. International Trade Commission in late July, Will Loux, senior vice president for global economic affairs at the National Milk Producers Federation, said the U.S. government should hold accountable trading partners with policies impacting U.S. dairy producers and exporters.

Subsidies from Canada, Turkey, India and the European Union have lowered the price of foreign nonfat milk solids being exported to global markets, Loux said.

The U.S. International Trade Commission is investigating the global nonfat milk solids market and export competitiveness, he said. The National Milk Producers Federation wants the U.S. to address Canada’s continued efforts to circumvent its trade commitments to limit offloading of artificially low-priced dairy proteins onto the global market.

“Canada’s exports of protein concentrates and isolates have more than doubled” since the United States Mexico Canada Agreement took effect July 1, 2020, replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Loux said.

Other foreign countries also are competing on the global market by selling at a discount, he said.

“Turkey’s whey exports—which have quadrupled in the last two years by selling at roughly half the global average—are increasingly moving beyond the Middle East and into critical export markets for U.S. manufacturers, including Southeast Asia and China. It is essential that the United States push back against dishonest trade practices and ensure that U.S. dairy producers can compete on a level playing field around the world,” Loux said in a statement.

Keywords

Global market keeps Wisconsin milk prices fluid,

Abrams,

tariffs,

Lefebre,

BerryLand,

U.S. Department of Agriculture,

Federal Milk Order Class III,

milk

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