Cheese, Butter Both See Decent Gains in Production Since Last January

In the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest dairy products report shows cheese and butter both had reasonable gains since January 2017.

Total cheese output (excluding cottage cheese) was 1.08 billion pounds, 3.4 percent above January 2017 but 1.0 percent below December 2017.

Italian type cheese production totaled 470 million pounds, 3.4 percent above January 2017 and 0.5 percent above December 2017.

American type cheese production totaled 429 million pounds, 2.7 percent above January 2017 but 1.0 percent below December 2017.

Butter production was 185 million pounds, 4.3 percent above January 2017 and 9.0 percent above December 2017.

Dry milk products (comparisons in percentage with January 2017)

• Nonfat dry milk, human – 162 million pounds, up 5.4 percent.
• Skim milk powder – 45.8 million pounds, down 17.2 percent.

Whey products (comparisons in percentage with January 2017)

• Dry whey, total – 89.3 million pounds, up 8.5 percent.
• Lactose, human and animal – 94.1 million pounds, up 1.5 percent.
• Whey protein concentrate, total – 44.3 million pounds, up 10.4 percent.

Frozen products (comparisons in percentage with January 2017)

• Ice cream, regular (hard) – 56.6 million gallons, down 0.9 percent.
• Ice cream, lowfat (total) – 30.5 million gallons, up 5.6 percent.
• Sherbet (hard) – 2.93 million gallons, down 3.2 percent.
• Frozen yogurt (total) – 4.76 million gallons, down 1.2 percent

The full dairy products report can be found here.