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Early Morning Update - April 1, 2025

By: Dairy Team - Chicago, Dairy Chicago

 

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The dairy complex was mixed yesterday as position squaring and indecision appeared to be the theme. We could chalk up the good two-sided, relatively stable futures trade to the unknowns around today’s “liberation day” announcements, but there may have been a more immediate issue. CME Direct Auction, the platform on which spot loads transact during the spot call, had technical difficulties yesterday.

Although some traders appeared to have full access, it’s believed that not all could participate. Evidence of this is in both the direct phone calls we received on the matter and a one-hour delay in the spot NFDM call – an industry first. All told, just one butter load traded yesterday down a penny to $2.3400 and the barrel market fell a penny to $1.6250 on a single offer (no trade). All other prices opened and closed unchanged with no trading.

Despite the unusual technical glitch, we’re not sure the result would have been vastly different for these markets. Cheese remains rather stable in the low $1.60’s, which has largely been the price level of cheese for the better part of a month now. Class III and Cheese prices have adjusted for this and remain sideways around current levels with trade volumes tapering off yesterday (917 Class III contracts and 381 Cheese yesterday). After seeing resistance at their one month highs at the end of last week, butter has been sideways as well and finished mixed yesterday on lower volume. With global SMP prices steady to weaker, NFDM futures have managed to consolidate the last few sessions and find support at contract lows. The market likely needs additional news to warrant new lows.

We expect a mixed trade early as the trade awaits fresh data from this morning’s GDT Auction.

SGX futures are pointing toward a slight increase for the upcoming auction. The recent GDT pulse auction saw another significant decline (-3.3%) in SMP prices while WMP prices stayed flat. Futures are projecting SMP to bounce back from the value traded on GDT Pulse along with increases in AMF and WMP prices.

Pasture growth levels in New Zealand have faced challenges as warm temperatures and lack of rain (particularly in the North Island) has led to soil moisture deficits compared to the historical average.

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The USDA estimated 2025 U.S. corn planted acreage at 95.326 million acres in yesterday’s Planting Intentions Report, up from 94.0 mln acres at the Feb Ag Forum and nearly a million above the average estimate, as well as 4.7 mln acres higher year-over-year. It was the fourth-highest-ever March print from the USDA, behind 2012-2013 and 2020; June acreage was even higher in each of those first two years but fell by five million into June 2020. The record “final” corn area is 97.3 mln in 2012 but 95.4 mln in 2013 is second.

Corn futures were 3-5 higher overnight, beans up 2-3, Meal 50 cents to 1 lower.

  • Dairy

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