11-4 FB Corn Up Beef Up

 Higher meat prices may be headed in our direction. In a blog from the IFB I saw this little item which is not great news. Higher corn prices will lead to higher retail meat prices, according to Bill Sirakos, who is a senior economist with Frost Bank. Sirakos said “Stock the freezer. Higher-price corn is going to raise the price of food… beef, poultry and pork prices will all go up.”

Corn makes up 80 percent of the feed for pigs, 72 percent for broiler chicken and 49 percent for beef cattle, according to Kalo’s calculations. He said it is hard to pinpoint how much retail meat prices will rise, but the wholesale price of tom turkeys is up 15 percent this year over last year, wholesale cattle prices are up 13.5 percent over last year and broiler chickens are up 7 percent.

In Idaho, I asked Agri Beef’s Jay Theiler and he seemed a little concerned: “We’ve seen the cutoff go up recently, what it’s gonna do down the road…I don’t know.” I don’t know either but but one thing I do know…with the economy down and prices going up, the equation doesn’t appear to have a positive result. Altin Kalo, a food analyst with Steiner Consulting Group in New Hampshire, said prices for turkey and ham should increase as the holidays approach. “Overall, the trend is toward higher prices for meat proteins,” Kalo said.