American cheese stockpiles hit record levels

America has a big cheese problem. More than 600,000 tonnes of the stuff is piling up around the country as demand collapses.

America has a big cheese problem.

More than 600,000 tonnes of American cheese, cheddar and other varieties is piling up in cold-storage warehouses across the country as trade tensions with China and Mexico and changing domestic tastes put the squeeze on demand.

The 1.4 billion pound (635,000 tonne) hoard is the biggest since records began a century ago, The Wall Street Journal reports, with many producers paying to have their excess cheese stored in the hopes demand and prices will improve.

“There’s a whole ton of aged product laying around,” INTL FCStone Financial dairy market analyst Nate Donnay told the paper.

Market prices for cheddar have fallen by 25-28 per cent this year, while retaliatory tariffs by China and Mexico on US cheese and whey saw September exports to those countries fall by 63 per cent and 10 per cent compared with 2017.

And despite record per capita cheese consumption of 17kg last year, domestic consumers are ditching processed, American and plain cheddar cheese en masse in favour of imported varieties.

The cheese glut has pushed down milk prices, hurting farmers. As milk prices collapse, more than 600 dairy farms in the cheesemaking state of Wisconsin have gone out of business this year alone.

On Monday, US President Donald Trump announced a second round of assistance payments worth more than $6.8 billion to farmers and ranchers affected by “unjustified trade retaliation” as a result of his trade feuds.

Three-quarters of the trade relief is directed at soybean growers, but producers of dairy, pork, corn, wheat, sorghum, cotton, almonds and cherries will also receive payouts, Politico reported.

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Originally published as American cheese stockpiles hit record levels