Where does cheese come from?

In 2023 United States produced 6.4 million tonnes, 28% of the world's 23 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Germany followed with 10%, then France (7.5%), Italy (5.3%) and Netherlands (4.3%). The top five account for 55%, 95 countries reported output and 30% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +25% over the ten years to 2023 and +1% on the previous year.

Cheese is a way of storing milk. Raw milk is mostly water and lasts days; cheese concentrates the protein and fat into something that keeps for months and travels, which is why it became the form in which dairy crosses borders. Production therefore sits where milk is produced, and the ranking here follows the milk ranking closely: see /commodities/milk/ for the underlying supply and the dairy price.

The series counts cheese made from whole cow milk, so buffalo mozzarella, sheep and goat cheeses fall outside it, while the trade data covers cheese and curd from any milk.

Germany was the largest exporter of cheese (HS 0406) in 2024 with 15% of world export value, ahead of Italy (13%), on world trade of $44.8 billion (CEPII BACI). Germany was the largest importer with 13%.

European countries fill both sides of the table because much of this trade is internal to the European single market: German, Dutch, French and Italian cheese crosses borders within Europe before any of it leaves. Ranking exporters by shipments to the rest of the world would produce a shorter and different list.

The growth in demand is elsewhere. Japan, the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Latin America buy cheese they do not make, mostly commodity mozzarella and cheddar for food manufacture and food service, supplied by the European Union, New Zealand and the United States. Named regional cheeses are a much smaller share of tonnage than of attention.

There is no futures price on this page. Exchange-traded contracts do exist for cheese and for Class III milk in the United States, and this site does not carry them; the dairy benchmark it does carry sits on /commodities/milk/. Elsewhere cheese is priced on wholesale block and barrel quotations, on cooperative pool payments to farmers, and on private assessments published by subscription services.

Most cheese never touches a spot quote at all. It is sold on annual retail and food-service contracts whose formulas reference published milk component values, so what moves is the milk price and the plant's margin rather than a cheese price as such. Protected regional cheeses are priced separately by age and grade, with consortium rules limiting how much may be made.

Milk is the overwhelming input cost, so cheese follows the milk market rather than leading it. Feed costs, weather, herd size and the milk price paid to farmers all reach cheese with a lag of weeks. The dairy price series carried on this site is at /commodities/milk/.

Milk can go to cheese, butter and powder, and processors send it where the components earn most. When butterfat is dear relative to protein, milk is pulled away from cheese vats, and cheese output falls without any change in the number of cows.

Cheese faces high tariffs and tariff-rate quotas in most importing countries, so access is rationed rather than priced. A quota allocation, a veterinary certificate or a sudden import ban can matter more to an exporter than the cost of making the cheese.

Geographical indications restrict who may use a name and often cap output within a defined area. That is a real supply constraint and a durable premium, and it is why cheese names are fought over in trade negotiations more fiercely than tariff lines are.

Cheesemaking leaves whey, and a modern plant depends on selling whey protein and lactose. When whey prices are strong the plant can afford to sell cheese more cheaply, so the sports nutrition and infant formula markets quietly influence what cheese costs.

Milk is standardized to a target fat and protein ratio, usually pasteurized, and set with starter cultures that acidify it and with rennet that coagulates it. Rennet was once an extract of calf stomach; most is now chymosin made by fermentation, which is why cheese supply no longer depends on the veal trade.

The curd is cut, stirred and warmed to expel whey, then drained, salted and shaped. What happens next defines the family: fresh cheeses are eaten within days; pasta filata curds such as mozzarella are stretched in hot water; hard cheeses are pressed, brined and matured for months or years; blues and washed rinds are ripened with deliberate molds and bacteria.

Yield is the number that governs plant economics, at roughly ten liters of milk for a kilogram of hard cheese, and the rest leaves as whey. Aging ties up capital and space, so long-matured cheeses carry an inventory cost that fresh cheeses do not.

Most cheese is eaten as cheese, but the largest single industrial pull is pizza, which made mozzarella the volume cheese of world trade. Processed cheese, made by blending and emulsifying, supplies slices, spreads and food service, and shredded and diced cheese goes into prepared meals, sauces and snacks.

The by-products are now a business in their own right. Whey is dried and fractionated into whey protein concentrate and isolate for sports and clinical nutrition, lactose for pharmaceuticals and infant formula, and permeate for animal feed. Cream skimmed off before cheesemaking goes to butter, and brine and washings are recovered where regulations require it.

The chain starts with a collection radius. Milk is heavy and perishable, so tankers gather it from farms within a few hours of the plant, which fixes cheese factories in dairy regions and makes the plant, not the farm, the bottleneck. A new cheese plant is a large, indivisible investment, so capacity arrives in steps and then has to be filled.

From the vat the cheese moves to ripening rooms, then to cutting and packing operations that are often close to the retail market rather than to the milk. Hard cheese travels well in ordinary refrigerated containers; fresh cheeses are made near where they are eaten.

The vulnerabilities are the milk supply, the export certificate and the culture. Milk cannot be stored while a dispute is settled, veterinary and quota paperwork can strand a container at a port, and the starter cultures and fermentation-produced chymosin that every plant depends on come from a small number of specialist suppliers.