How much longer will cattle trend toward lighter slaughter weights?Today’s WASDE report lowered earlier estimates of total 2017 beef production based on lighter-weight cattle. This was despite a higher number being harvested and the trend toward even higher slaughter rates in the second half of the year.Current prices for fed cattle are strong and steady as a result of packers covering orders and the fewer cattle grading at choice, which has led to the former spending more for higher grade. That should all change, however, as record-high feedlot placements will lead to increased slaughter totals and bearish fed cattle prices later this summer. Slaughter is already running 5.7 percent ahead of last year with beef production up only 3.8 perce...
What You Need to Know Today: A third U.S. border crossing (Columbus, New Mexico) has reopened to Mexican cattle imports following nearly two years of restrictions related to New World screwworm. The reopening could gradually improve feeder cattle availability, although more than 60 confi...
Yesterday, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) released a new report of negotiated cash purchases of cattle under the mandatory price report. The report included Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas. The goal of the report was to solve the confidentiality issues e...
Beef packer margins plunged $105/head last week to $36/head as higher cattle prices combined with declining wholesale beef values to sharply compress packer profits. Fed cattle prices rose nearly $3/cwt to $227/cwt while the Choice cutout fell $4.75/cwt to $368/cwt. Margins have deteriorated $1...
From WPI Consulting
Communicating importance of value-added products
Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.