Economics 101: More Weight on Fewer Cattle
With your Southeast Regional Ag News, I am Haylie Shipp. This is the Ag Information Network.
The last two years for the cattle market have been very volatile, according to CattleFax CEO Randy Blach who recently spoke at the U.S. Meat Export Federation spring meeting in Kansas City, Missouri. Talking on the U.S. beef cow herd, he said we’ve hit the point where we are not seeing liquidation nor expansion. That’s right, middle ground. But we are also seeing something unfold when it comes to cattle weight…
“It’s just Economics 101. It’s just pretty simple. We’ve got fewer numbers to harvest out here. We’ve got non-fed slaughter, cow and bull slaughter, we think will be down 700,000 to 750,000 for the year. We’ve got fed slaughter that’ll be down 700,000 to 750,000 for the year, so you know, a million-and-a-half head reduction in the number of animals we harvest. With cost of gains back here in the low dollar and the price of fed cattle up here in the $1.80s and $1.90s, it’s a strong economic signal to put more weight on each animal. And the market still wants more choice and prime carcasses. That’s what it wants. So we’ll be able to do a better job of producing more of those types of carcasses as we go forward.”
That’s CattleFax CEO Randy Blach.
