David Fickling, Columnist

What's the Beef With Dairy Prices?

Rising dairy prices are the flip side of cheap burgers -- good for arbitrage as well as barbecues.

September 11, 2016 at 7:00 PM UTC

David Fickling is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering climate change and energy. Previously, he worked for Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

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What the burger giveth, the cheese taketh away.

Americans enjoyed some of the lowest ground-beef prices for their Labor Day barbecues in five years last week, thanks to a glut of cattle, chickens and hogs. Unfortunately for those who like something to melt over their patties, prices for the milk used by cheesemakers rose to a 20-month high last month, with Chicago Class III milk futures up 21 percent in the three months to last Monday.