Cattle futures strengthened Tuesday, helped along by recently higher wholesale beef values and likely lower fed cattle carcass weights in the near term due to the severe winter weather.
Feeder Cattle futures closed an average of $1.16 higher.
Live Cattle futures closed an average of 74¢ higher (22¢ higher at the back to $1.75 higher in spot Feb).
Negotiated cash fed cattle trade was at a standstill through Tuesday afternoon, according to the Agricultural Marketing Service. Last week, FOB live prices were $172/cwt. in the Southern, Plains $173 in Nebraska and $175 in the western Corn Belt. Dressed delivered prices were $272-$275 in Nebraska and $275 in the western Corn Belt.
Choice boxed beef cutout value was $3.57 higher Tuesday afternoon at 294.99/cwt. Select was $7.42 higher at $279.98/cwt.
The higher dollar helped pressure Wheat futures, leading Corn futures along.
The higher U.S. dollar helped pressure Wheat futures, pulling Corn along.
Corn futures closed mostly 3¢ to 4¢ lower.
KC HRW Wheat futures closed mostly 10¢ to 14¢ lower.
Lower South American production estimates helped support Soybean futures. They closed 1¢ to 3¢ higher through near Aug and then mostly 1¢ to 2¢ lower.
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Major U.S. financial indices closed lower Tuesday as yield for the 10-year U.S. Treasury note climbed.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 231 points lower. The S&P 500 closed 17 points lower. The NASDAQ was down 28 points.
West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil futures (CME) closed 27¢ to 37¢ lower through the front six contracts.
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Perhaps the more domestic retail beef consumers change the more they stay the same. Consider recent research conducted by Kansas State University (K-State) with partial funding from the Kansas Beef Council. More than 3,000 consumers responded to a nationally representative survey aimed at determining the current importance of specific beef attributes to consumers.
Freshness (51% of respondents), price (51%) and food safety (49%) were overwhelmingly ranked as the top three attributes by consumers overall. Flavorful, juicy and tender ranked fourth.
“On the other end of our ranking spectrum were 1) supporting local farmers, 2) nutritious content, and 3) low carbon beef. Less than one‐quarter of respondents indicated any of these three were among the most important,” according to K-State researchers. “A surprising 57% of our respondents placed low carbon beef as least important. Given elevating importance of public concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and contributions of beef cattle production to greenhouse gases, as well as branded products being developed in this space, we expected more consumers to rank this attribute important.”
With that said, researchers note each of the nine attributes consumer could choose were among the most important to some and the least important to others.
“This illustrates heterogeneous preferences of consumers for beef product attributes,” according to the report. “Furthermore, it indicates a variety of beef product claims can potentially be successful in attracting consumers. For example, roughly one‐quarter of consumers indicate animal welfare, no hormone/antibiotic use, supports local farmers, and nutritious content are among their three most important beef purchase decision determinants.”
These are the nine beef attributes consumers were asked to rank: price; freshness; flavorful, juicy, tender; nutritious content; safety of food; supports local farmers; low carbon beef; animal welfare; produced without use of hormones or antibiotics.