Booming Feed Price Push up Milk, Cow Slaughter Rises in US

U.S. milk production is headed for the biggest contraction in 12 years as a drought-fueled surge in feed costs drives more cows to slaughter.

Output will drop 0.5 percent to 198.9 billion pounds (90.2 million metric tons) in 2013 as the herd shrinks to an eight-year low, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Milk futures rose 45 percent since mid-April and may advance at least another 19 percent to a record $25 per 100 pounds by June, said Shawn Hackett. The president of Boynton Beach, Florida-based Hackett Financial Advisers Inc. correctly predicted the rally in March.

Dairies in California, the top milk-producing state, are filing for bankruptcy, and U.S. cows are being slaughtered at the fastest rate in more than a quarter century. Corn surged to a record in August as the USDA forecast the smallest crop in six years because of drought across the U.S. Global dairy prices tracked by the United Nations rose 6.9 percent last month, the most among the five food groups monitored, and that will probably mean record costs next year, Rabobank estimates.

Mercantile Exchange

Class III milk, used to make cheese, jumped 22 percent to $21.05 on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange this year. That’s more than 21 of the 24 commodities in the Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index, which rose 1.8 percent. The MSCI All-Country World Index (MXWD)of equities climbed 12 percent, and Treasuries returned 1.8 percent, a Bank of America Corp. index shows.

Almost 2.04 million dairy cows were slaughtered in the first eight months of the year, 6.7 percent more than in 2011 and the most for that period since 1986, government data show. The U.S. dairy herd will shrink 1.1 percent to 9.11 million head in 2013, the smallest since 2005, according to the USDA.

Food prices measured by the UN index may climb to a record 243 by June 2013, from a six-month high of 215.76 in September, Nick Higgins, an analyst at Rabobank in London, said in a report Sept. 19. The UN’s gauge of 55 food items, which gained 7.7 percent since June, peaked at 237.92 in February 2011.

Chinese demand for dairy products and lower production in the U.S. and New Zealand probably will keep prices rising into next year, said Hackett. China is the world’s biggest buyer of whole-milk powder and will import four times more this year than a decade ago, USDA data show.