The USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) released its Agricultural Prices report Feb. 28, which includes feed costs and milk prices used to calculate the January Dairy Margin Coverage (DMC) program margins and indemnity payments. January’s margin was $13.85 per hundredweight (cwt), continuing momentum from the program’s historic margins realized in 2024.

Small declines in milk prices and climbing feed costs give way to tighter margins as we head into the spring months. Yet, margins are still swaying in a dairy producer’s favor.

In the news at the end of February 2025: commercialization efforts underway for HPAI vaccine for dairy, data quantifies beef-on-dairy value, and the world’s first lab-made cow milk is released.

With 216 filings, farm bankruptcies were up 55% from 2023. Declining farm receipts, primarily in crop markets, led to an increase in the number of U.S. farms filing for Chapter 12 bankruptcy in 2024.

In the news affecting dairy producers' bottom lines as we finish February 2025: Class I base price dips for March, legislation is introduced to improve milk pricing transparency, and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins releases funding to honor farmer contracts.

Dairy cull cows marketed through U.S. slaughter plants in January lowest since 2010.

Fourteen states including Texas, Idaho, New York and South Dakota boosted milk production a combined 306 million pounds in January.

In dairy-related news this third week of February 2025: Arizona finds new HPAI genotype through milk testing, AFBF reported farmers lost $20.3 billion to weather disasters in 2024, and DFA and Promised Land Dairy launch new milk products.

In dairy-related headlines this week: After declining for 14 years, fluid milk sales end 2024 higher; Rollins confirmed as secretary of agriculture; and HSUS changes its name.