Cattle Current Podcast—March 25, 2022

Cattle futures gained a little ground Thursday with softer Corn futures. Positioning ahead of Friday’s Cattle on Feed report could have also played a role.

Feeder Cattle futures closed an average of 57¢ higher except for unchanged in the back contract.

Live Cattle futures closed an average of 32¢ higher.

Grain futures backed up a pace, pressured in part by bearish weekly U.S. export sales and perhaps some skittishness over next week’s Planting Intentions report.

Corn futures closed 4¢ to 9¢ lower through Jly ’23 and then mostly 1¢ to 5¢ higher.

Soybean futures closed 13¢ to 18¢ lower through Jan ’23 and then unchanged to 10¢ lower.

Negotiated cash fed cattle trade was limited on light demand in all major cattle feeding regions through Thursday afternoon, with too few transactions to trend, according to the Agricultural Marketing Service.

So far this week, live prices are steady in the Southern Plains and Nebraska at $138/cwt. and steady to $1 lower in the western Corn Belt at $139-$142. Dressed prices are steady in Nebraska at $221 and steady to $1 lower in the western Corn Belt at $221.

Choice Boxed beef cutout value was 81¢ higher Thursday afternoon at $262.41/cwt. Select was 65¢ lower at $252.59.

Net U.S. beef export sales of 27,500 MT (2022) for the week ending March 17 were a marketing-year high, according to the U.S. Export Sales report. Sales were 40% more than the previous week and 29% more than the prior four-week average.

Increases were primarily for South Korea, China, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan.