Feeder Cattle futures contracts rallied last week as shown in the figure above. Prices for the October Feeder Cattle contract rose approximately $5 between the Tuesday close and the Friday close. The story was similar for other contract months, too, including the March contract.
The rally can be attributed to “good news” from multiple sources. … Continue reading

USDA’s Economic Research Service and Foreign Agricultural Service released the most recent monthly trade data last week. The big story is continued large beef exports. For the month of July, exports were up 16.8 percent over July 2017. For January-July, beef exports were 15 percent higher than the same period a year ago.
U.S. … Continue reading

2018 has been both an interesting and somewhat steady year for the cattle market. Large supplies, record exports, and trade concerns are just a few of the topics that have dominated the headlines. We are now fully transitioning into the primary calf selling (and buying) time of the year for most producers in the southeast. I’m going to try to sum up a few of the more prominent factors and discuss how they could impact cattle prices this fall. … Continue reading

This week’s article is a little different from usual, but hopefully one that you’ll enjoy. I was in Washington D.C. over the weekend at the Agricultural and Applied Economics annual meeting. This is our national association and it brings together applied economists from around the world studying nearly every topic you can imagine. … Continue reading

One of the most interesting questions that I always enjoying discussing is the state of the cattle cycle. The cattle cycle is the path of cattle inventory from low to peak and back to the low point again. Our current cattle cycle began during the 2014 low-point in cattle inventory that spurred record prices. This began the eighth cattle cycle since 1938 with each ranging from 9 to 14 years. … Continue reading

The following article is from the Livestock Marketing Information Center. It discusses an interesting topic about which I have spoken with many of you at various meetings. After years of dramatic price swings (high volatility), markets have settled significantly to lower levels of variability. While the article uses Oklahoma City as an example, the story is true for markets across the Southeast.  … Continue reading