USDA cold storage report

Definition

The Cold Storage report is USDA NASS’s monthly count of food held in refrigerated warehouses (about 750 public and private warehouses on the NASS list) on the last day of the previous month. For dairy it reports:

Butter stocks, million lb.
Cheese stocks: total natural cheese, broken out into American (cheddar and similar), Swiss and other natural cheese, million lb.

Each figure is shown with the prior month and the same month a year earlier, plus the percent changes. Butter and total natural cheese also show stocks in public warehouses. The report is released around the fourth week of the month (for example, September 25, 2026 for August 31 stocks). Butter and natural cheese are the only dairy lines (as of the September 2026 issue). Plants storing butter or cheese must report by law.

Stocks are a supply-and-demand balance indicator. Stocks rising faster than normal for the season point to product backing up (bearish for butter and cheese prices, and so for Class III/IV); stocks falling faster than normal point to tight supply.

The survey frame (NASS methodology notes; 7 CFR 1170.10) covers facilities cooled to 50°F or lower where food is normally stored 30 days or more. That includes dairy manufacturing plants that meet the 30-day test. It excludes space run by wholesalers, jobbers, distributors and chain stores, locker plants, meat packer branch houses, and processors that turn their whole inventory over more than once a month. Stocks count regardless of owner, including government-owned stocks and imports. Product in transit, or in short-turnover space, isn’t included. NASS revises the prior month in each report and publishes final figures in the February annual summary.

Formula

Plain text:

YoY change (%) = (stocks this month − stocks same month last year) / stocks same month last year × 100
MoM change (lb) = stocks this month − stocks last month
seasonal surprise = this year's MoM change − average MoM change for that month (prior years)

LaTeX:

\Delta\%_{\text{YoY}} = \frac{S_t - S_{t-12}}{S_{t-12}} \times 100
\qquad
\text{surprise}_t = (S_t - S_{t-1}) - \overline{(S_{m} - S_{m-1})}_{\text{prior years}}

How to pull it in DC305

DC305 doesn’t hold commodity stocks; it is a herd record. Get the data from USDA NASS: the monthly Cold Storage report and annual summary, or NASS Quick Stats for history. Dairy Market News commentary from USDA AMS often summarizes the dairy lines the same day.

Typical range

Herd context: US national warehouse stocks; month-end values for 2025 (NASS Cold Storage 2025 Summary), with August 2026 for comparison.

Item	2025 range	Seasonal pattern	August 31, 2026
Butter	~188–365 million lb	Built from January to a May peak, then drew down to a December low	316 million lb
American cheese	~787–837 million lb	Flatter; peaked in June	816 million lb
Total natural cheese	~1.36–1.45 billion lb	Follows American cheese	1.44 billion lb

For August 31 stocks, the NASS record highs are 706 million lb of butter (1992) and 1.50 billion lb of total natural cheese (2023).

Common mistakes

Reading a raw month-over-month change as news. Butter almost always builds in spring and draws in fall. Judge the change against the normal seasonal move for that month.
Reading YoY in isolation. A YoY increase after a year of very low stocks can still mean tight supply. Look at the level against the multi-year range too.
Treating stocks as demand. Stocks change with production, exports and domestic use; the report doesn’t say which moved.
Ignoring revisions to the prior month in the new report.
Mixing the stock date with the release date. Stocks are as of the end of the previous month.