Strong Cattle Trends Expected to Continue Long Term

After four years of cow herd liquidation in the US, the market is showing a response. RoboResearch Senior Animal Protein Analyst, Lance Zimmerman.

“We put the highs in the US beef cow inventory. Basically on January wanna 2019 at over 31 million head. We've reduced that cow herd by 2.8 million heads since those highs. And so as we look at what's gone on, we've we've delayed some of the price response the higher price response that we would expect due to that liquidation because we had COVID backing up supplies and feed yards backing up supplies on farms and ranches. We finally worked through all of that carryover that we built up through those slowdowns. And now as we come out of 2022, which was record high beef production. Now year to date, kind of January through May, we're seeing beef production down about four and a half percent year over year through that period.”

This combined with strong beef demand has led to an explosive market he says and traditionally fed and box beef prices will be coming off of spring highs right now, but instead...

“We're talking about new record highs, but the long-run trend is up probably for the next several years.”

That is with seasonal market contractions from spring to summer. Tomorrow, Zimmerman highlights a brand new report released on the changing Argentine beef industry and what that means to the US.