The U.S. Department of Agriculture has corrected two errors in the federal regulations used to help determine minimum prices for milk, including a 10-cent discrepancy affecting Morgan County, Ohio.
The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service issued the correcting amendment to the Class I differential table under the Federal Milk Marketing Order program, with the changes taking effect September 18, 2026.
One correction changes Morgan County’s listed Class I differential from $3.90 to $3.80. The other removes an obsolete listing for Shannon County, South Dakota, which was renamed Oglala Lakota County years ago.
Although the changes appear in federal milk-pricing regulations, consumers shouldn’t interpret the announcement as a new nationwide increase or decrease in grocery-store milk prices.
Morgan County’s Differential Should Have Been $3.80
The Morgan County correction traces back to USDA’s much larger overhaul of Federal Milk Marketing Order pricing formulas.
In January 2025, the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service issued a final rule updating pricing formulas used across all 11 Federal Milk Marketing Orders.
Among those changes were updated Class I differential values designed to reflect changes in the cost of supplying the fluid-milk market.
During the rulemaking process, commenters argued that Morgan County and four neighboring Ohio counties should have a $3.80 Class I differential instead of the $4.00 figure USDA had initially proposed.
USDA agreed, but when the final regulatory table was published, Morgan County was inadvertently listed at $3.90 while the other four counties received the intended $3.80 figure.
The September correction fixes that error.
What Does a Class I Differential Actually Do?
Class I milk generally refers to milk used for fluid beverage products rather than milk used to produce products such as cheese, butter or dry milk ingredients.
The federal pricing system uses geographic Class I differentials because the cost and economic conditions associated with supplying fluid milk differ from one location to another.
USDA’s Class I pricing information explains that the monthly Class I price for a regulated handler is calculated by adding the appropriate Class I differential for the handler’s county location to the nationwide Class I mover.
The resulting Class I price represents the minimum price regulated handlers must pay for milk used to produce Class I fluid milk products under the applicable Federal Milk Marketing Order.
That means the Morgan County correction matters to the regulated dairy-pricing system, even though consumers won’t see a simple 10-cent reduction on a gallon of milk at the grocery store.
This Doesn’t Mean Morgan County Milk Will Suddenly Drop 10 Cents
The difference between Morgan County’s incorrect $3.90 listing and its intended $3.80 differential is 10 cents per hundredweight of milk.
A hundredweight, commonly abbreviated cwt, equals 100 pounds.
But that doesn’t translate into a direct 10-cent change in the price consumers pay for a gallon of milk.
Retail milk prices reflect many costs beyond the regulated minimum price for farm milk, including processing, packaging, transportation, distribution and retail expenses.
USDA also calculates and announces Class I prices monthly using pricing formulas that incorporate more than the county differential alone.
For consumers, the important distinction is that this amendment corrects one component of the regulated milk-pricing formula rather than setting a new retail price.
USDA Is Also Removing an Obsolete South Dakota County
The second correction doesn’t change a dollar amount currently assigned to an existing county.
Instead, USDA is cleaning up an outdated geographic entry.
Shannon County, South Dakota, was renamed Oglala Lakota County in 2015, but the old Shannon County name remained in the federal Class I differential table with a $0.00 entry.
Oglala Lakota County now appears separately in the pricing table with the applicable Class I differential.
USDA is therefore removing the obsolete Shannon County entry rather than continuing to list a county name that no longer officially exists.
The Corrections Follow a Much Larger Milk Pricing Overhaul
The technical fixes come after USDA implemented major changes to Federal Milk Marketing Order pricing formulas in 2025.
According to USDA, dairy producers in all 11 Federal Milk Marketing Orders approved amendments that included new Class I differentials, updated manufacturing allowances and changes to the formula used to determine the base Class I skim milk price.
Most of those changes became effective June 1, 2025, with updated skim-milk composition factors taking effect later that year.
USDA maintains current pricing formulas, effective Class I differentials and other educational materials through its Dairy Education Resource Center.
The September 2026 amendment doesn’t reopen those broader policy decisions; it corrects the regulatory table so it accurately reflects the previously adopted pricing framework.
What Dairy Producers and Processors Should Know
For most households buying milk at the grocery store, no immediate action is necessary because of this correction.
The change is more directly relevant to regulated milk handlers, dairy producers and others working with Federal Milk Marketing Order calculations in the affected areas.
Morgan County’s Class I differential should now be treated as $3.80 rather than the mistakenly published $3.90 figure.
The obsolete Shannon County entry in South Dakota is being removed, while milk-pricing information for the same geographic area is listed under its current name, Oglala Lakota County.
Anyone calculating regulated milk prices can use USDA’s current Federal Milk Marketing Order resources rather than relying on older versions of the regulatory table.
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