High Beef Prices

High Beef Prices

High Beef Prices. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture.

If you haven't noticed, beef prices are high. Cattle producers all around the nation are seeing prices that have never been seen. Feeder cattle, fat cattle and cull cow prices have skyrocketed. How long will this last? Mike Miller, Senior VP of Global Marketing & Research with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, says now is a great time to be a cattle producer.?MILLER: For producers it's a lot of good news. We've got a tremendous amount of demand out there for U.S. beef both domestically and globally being met with a fairly tight supply. When that happens in our industry and moderate grain prices and feed prices around the country we end up in a pretty good situation. From a prices standpoint, I think from an overall profitability standpoint we're enjoying some pretty good times in the beef industry today.

Now, back to the question of "How long will this last?" Miller says the high prices could be around for a few years.

MILLER: I think we're in pretty good shape. We had a pretty significant run up here kind of late this summer and I think that probably caught a lot of people off guard. I think producers are certainly enjoying that. But as we go into the fall it looks like supplies are very tight. Producers are going to be met with strong demand for whatever it is they're producing. So I do think that these prices are here. Maybe not quite at these extreme levels but we're going to enjoy strong pricing for all classes of cattle and for U.S. beef at least for the next couple of years.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.

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