Milk Prices Continue to Rise, Corn Exports Keep Up Record Pace

The latest federal milk marketing order information is out and milk prices continue to slowly improve, enough that we're getting close to where we were last year. On the commodity export front, corn continues to set the pace while soybeans lag. And on Wall Street, indexes are posting their best year in six. 

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Hello and welcome to Chat BDC. I'm back with a quick update on business news across the aging financial markets. We've got our articles queued up for today, which is uh Friday, May 1st. Happy May Day, everybody. Today we're gonna focus on the continuing rise of milk prices, and then we're gonna switch over and look at commodity exports. We're gonna wrap up with our look uh at investments and Wall Street. So let's get to it. Start out with Jen Coyne, uh, who had a progress uh article on progressive dairy in the latest update on milk prices. Uh, it's all good news. USDA's announcement of class and component prices for April confirmed uh this buzz that's going on around milk prices. Prices rising in class two, three, and four for the fourth straight month. Milk marketing order advanced class one base price was boosted in April. Price per hundred weight increased three dollars and nineteen cents from March for a price of eighteen dollars and sixty-six cents per hundredweight. This is the first time all year that the price difference from 2025 was less than a dollar, as the April class price was only 91 cents below the price reported in the same month last year. Class two price was $18.82 $100 weight, which is up $1.48 per hundredweight from the previous month. It was still 40 cents below the class two price from April 2025. Class three price climbed 66 cents from March to $16.82 a hundredweight. It's still 66 cents less than the price recorded uh in March of 2025. Class 4 prices reached $20.22 $100 weight in April, which was a dollar twenty-eight higher than March's class four price and two dollars and thirty six two dollars and thirty cents a hundred weight more than April a year ago. Uh we've had a lot of news recently about how protein prices and so forth are affecting class four, and we're seeing that in those prices. Gap between April class three and class four milk prices was three dollars and forty cents a hundred weight with incentives for de-pooling at a higher price class four milk from some milk marketing pools. The last time the gap was this great where class four was the higher of was in April 2024. Looking at solids, butterfat and protein values were mixed. Butter fat prices fell from $2.02 a pound in March to $1.87 a pound. Protein prices rose more than 40 cents to $2.52 a pound in April. If we look back a year, prices were exactly flipped, with butterfigher at $2.64 a pound and protein lower at $2.17 a pound. Switching over to commodities, uh Ben Potter at Farm Futures provided info on USDA's latest export sales report, which was out Thursday morning and covered the week through April 23rd. Corn volume led the way once more, maintaining a solid year-over-year lead as it closes in on record levels for the 25-26 marketing year. Soybean sales were not as positive. Corn exports found 62.9 million bushels in exports, which was 21% higher week over week and 22% better than the prior four-week average. Cumulative sales have jumped 29% above last year's pace so far. Mexico was the number one destination, followed by Colombia, South Korea, Japan, and Venezuela. Looking at soybeans, exports fell 18% below the prior four-week average with 9.5 million bushels, slightly boosted by another 110,000 bushels in new crop sales. Old crop sales were on the lower end of analyst estimates, which ranged between 7.3 million and 22 million bushels. Cumulative sales for the 25-26 market year remained 18% below last year's pace so far, following a dip in exports to China. So I mean export shipments were 16% below the prior four-week average with 22.5 million bushels. China was the top destination, followed by Mexico, Indonesia, Egypt, and Colombia. Wrapping up in financial markets, as we put a close to April, the SP 500 and NASDAQ were on course to end April with their biggest gains since 2020, highlighting now how resilient corporate earnings have helped steady investor nerves despite a historic supply shock in the oil markets. Rally shows that investors are leaning heavily on earnings resilience to look past geopolitical turmoil, which means there's a higher risk of a quick tumble if companies begin to signal that war-driven costs are squeezing growth. One investor says there's this big tug of war, but the earnings side is winning so far. Market is trying to look through the near-term uncertainty, but of course, the longer it lasts, the more acute the pressures are. Inflation accelerated in March in line with economists' expectations, excluding the volatile food and energy components. Core inflation advanced 3.2% in the 12 months through March compared to the central bank's 2% target. One analyst says this reinforces the Fed's decision to leave rates unchanged yesterday and further corroborates the three dissenters' view toward moving the easing bias in the Fed's recent statement. One analyst says this reinforces the Fed's decision to leave rates unchanged earlier in the week and further corroborates the three dissenters' view towards removing the easing bias in the Fed's recent statement. Well, that's all for now. As always, thanks for tuning in. If you like this, subscribe and share it to all your friends. Have a good weekend, everybody. I'll be back Monday with more business news across the negative financial markets. Until then, I'm Mike Affirming.