India’s weekend announcement that it would ban wheat exports shoved nearby KC Wheat limit up 70¢ Monday, leading other grains higher.
Corn futures closed 16¢ to 28¢ higher through new-crop contracts and then mostly 7¢ to 9¢ higher.
Soybean futures closed 10¢ to 13¢ higher through Aug ‘23 and then mostly 1¢ to 4¢ higher.
Surging feed costs pressured Feeder Cattle futures an average of 66¢ lower.
Live Cattle futures closed an average of 69¢ higher, buoyed by oversold conditions, the cash premium and recently higher wholesale beef prices.
Choice Boxed beef cutout value was $1.36 higher Monday afternoon at $260.31/cwt. Select was $1.77 higher at $245.67.
Negotiated cash fed cattle trade was slow on light demand in the western Corn Belt through Monday afternoon with prices steady to $3 lower than last week at $142/cwt. Dressed prices there last week were $227-$230.
Elsewhere, trade was at a standstill, according to the Agricultural Marketing Service. Last week, live prices were $140 in the Southern Plains, $140-$144 in Colorado and $144 in Nebraska where dressed prices were $227-$230.
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Major U.S. financial indices closed flat to lower Monday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 26 points higher. The S&P 500 closed 15 points lower. The NASDAQ was down 142 points.
West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil futures on the CME closed $1.33 to $3.71 higher.
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“The bleak prospects for pasture and hay production, combined with continued diminishment of hay stocks, suggests that significant and severe impacts on cattle herds are ahead as summer approaches,” says Derrell Peel, Extension livestock marketing specialist at Oklahoma State University, in his weekly market comments.
Pointing to USDA’s recent Crop production report, Peel explains hay stocks May 1 were 6.9% less year over year and 15.1% less than the average for 2012-2021. He adds hay stocks were 17.7% less than a year earlier in the 17 Plains and Western states.
“In all of these 17 western states, drought continues widespread,” Peel says. “More than 50% of the U.S. beef cow herd is directly threatened by drought. Across the country more than 50% of pastures and range are in poor to very poor condition. That majority of this pasture and range is in these western states.”
Regionally, Peel says hay stocks in the West are 36.6% less than 2020 levels, following two years of drought and are 27.1% less than the 10-year average.
In the Southern Plains region of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, he explains May 1 hay stocks were down 12.0% year over year and down 25.3% from the 2012-2021 average.
“Colorado and Nebraska are unique among the 17 western states,” Peel says. “Colorado had hay stocks up 152.2% year over year and up 30.3% over the 10-year average. Nebraska had May 1 hay stocks up 25.0% year over year and 14.1% above the 2012-2021 average. Despite the improvement in hay stocks for these two states, drought conditions persist and pasture and range conditions are diminished in 2022.”
According to the latest USDA Crop Progress report, as of May 15, 22% of the nation’s pasture and range was classified as Good (20%) or Excellent (2%) compared to 25% last year, and 49% was rated Poor (24%) or Very Poor (25%) versus 43% the same week a year earlier.