Meat Processing Plant Closures

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Markets still struggling for bullish news, especially with meat processing plants continuing to have to shut down operations. Here’s Standard Grain’s Joe Vaclavik.

Vaclavik… “When you look at what's going on in livestock in particular, the supply chain issues are very much a big, big problem. You've got all of these plant closures, and there's really a laundry list of them at this point. JBS said yesterday that it's a beef plant in Greeley, Colorado would be closed until April 24, that's 5% of your cattle slaughter in the U S. Smithfield has that pork plant shut down in Sioux Falls. Tyson has a hog plant shut down in Iowa. National Beef has a plant shut down in Iowa. So we've got all sorts of different shutdowns that are related to the virus, and that just has caused a real disaster in these livestock markets.”

Chicago May Wheat futures yesterday closed down $0.06 ¼ to $5.48 ½.

Kansas City Hard Red Winter Wheat down $0.10 ¼ to $4.83 ½.

May Corn closed down $0.05 ½ to $3.26.

Not much changing in Portland for soft white wheat or club wheat, but the Dark Northern Spring wheat bids dropped $0.11 ½. Those now range from $6.51 to $6.81 for 14% protein.

Live Cattle futures were up $2.42 ½ after trading lower earlier in the day on the June board closing at $83.80. Feeder Cattle for May up just $0.40 to $114.85.

Class III milk finally with a positive day. Up $0.06 to $11.04.