Cattle futures continued higher Thursday, boosting hopes that the bottom had been etched.
Toward the close, Live Cattle futures were an average of $2.79 higher. Feeder Cattle futures were an average of $3.42 higher.
Negotiated cash fed cattle trade was mostly inactive on light demand in the North through Thursday afternoon, according to the Agricultural Marketing Service. So far this week, FOB live prices are $218-$22o/cwt., which is $7-$8 lower than last week. Dressed delivered prices are mostly $345, which is $10-$11 lower.
Choice boxed beef cutout value was $3.77 lower Thursday afternoon at $381.36/cwt. Select was $3.49 lower at $359.19.
Grain and Soybean were mixed on Thursday.
Toward the close and through the front four contracts, Corn futures were 5¢ to 6¢ lower on likely profit taking and producer selling.
Soybean futures were 1¢ to 2¢ lower with likely profit taking.
Kansas City HRW Wheat futures were 9¢ to 11¢ higher on continued war premium.
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Major U.S. financial indices closed higher Thursday, led by tech stocks.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 104 points higher. The S&P 500 closed 55 points higher. The NASDAQ was up 411 points.
Through mid-afternoon, West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil futures (CME) were 2¢ to $1.43 higher through the front six contracts.
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Considering the Administration’s recently announced plan to temporarily waive out-of-quota tariffs on imported “product” for ground beef, Roger McEowen says, “The fundamental choice facing policymakers is not between expensive beef and cheap beef. It is between a market that is allowed to produce more beef and a government policy that attempts to make beef cheaper by weakening the incentive to produce it.
“If the objective is genuinely to make beef more affordable for American consumers over the next five or ten years, prices should communicate scarcity, and producers should be free to respond to those signals. Government’s role should be primarily to remove barriers that prevent that response.”
That’s part of the conclusion to his Lowering Beef Prices Without Harming the Cattle Industry, shared by the Kansas State University (K-state) department of agricultural Economics. McEowen is the Kansas Farm Bureau Professor of Agricultural Law and Taxation at Washburn University School of Law and also teaches agricultural law at K-State.
“Temporary imports can provide a bridge while the cattle cycle works through its rebuilding phase, but the permanent solution is more cattle, more efficient production, more processing capacity and stronger competition throughout the supply chain,” McEowen says. “Tax policy can lower the after-tax cost of herd expansion and infrastructure investment; credit and risk-management programs can reduce catastrophic production risk; and antitrust and Packers and Stockyards enforcement can protect genuine competition without treating mere industry concentration as unlawful. In short, Washington should not try to manufacture a lower beef price. It should create the legal, tax and economic environment in which American ranchers have a reason to produce more beef. That is how consumers ultimately get lower prices without destroying the domestic cattle industry that supplies them.”