HOT BARN REPORT: R-CalfUSA Friday with Karina Jones

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HOT BARN REPORT: R-CalfUSA Friday with Karina Jones

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Welcome to the Friday edition of the HOT BARN REPORT
Heard ONLY on American radio stations across the nation and online at hotbarnreport.com!

Karina Jones, Field Director for R-Calf USA joins us each Friday from her ranch in the heart of Nebraska covering what’s new and important to the family farm and ranch.

Do you have enough rope left to tie another knot?

Welcome to this Friday edition of Hot Barn Report.
If a rapidly depleting cattle herd does one thing, it gives cattle economists and journalists something to write about, something to get you really excited about. While rural America withers away, this has to mean tightening supplies of cattle, which should lead to higher prices. But, as our broken market has proved in the past, fundamentals are just a term used at basketball practice.

So, let’s start with the fact that we are facing a domestic cattle herd that is declining rapidly. No shock, we have been through this before, but cuts to the domestic herd haven’t been this severe in decades. I know people are going to say, “Karina, don’t be so gloom & doom. It is a drought. We will come around.” Actually, I don’t believe we will rebound these herd numbers. We have an aging population of cattle producers who are looking at retirement while they still have a few good years to enjoy it. The face, back, and knees of rural America are not getting any younger. Calving heifers is a young gun’s game and more & more of them are headed to town to work.

I can’t say I blame them. Look at the fundamentals. My girls just paid $8.40 a bushel for corn at the local elevator to finish their 4-H steers! $8.40 a bushel! What a slap for our 4-H and FFA kids trying to get their toes wet in the water of raising cattle. And how about that $5 diesel? Let me tell you paying bills around the ranch is a real party right now!
So when I see these market analysts and journalists jubilant about how hot this fall run will be with tighter supplies of cattle, I think those of us who live in the real world, know we are just one fire, pandemic, war away from knocking that utopian idea to the curb.

No matter how hard we try, cattle producers cannot gain leverage in the market that the powerful Big 4, conglomerates have. They hold all the cards. It is their game on both sides of the coin. Once again, beef retailers are taking the Big 4 to court. Grocery retailer, Giant Eagle alleges antitrust practices by the Big 4 “led to shortages in the beef market. These artificial conditions, in turn, boosted the prices Defendants charged, and which Giant Eagle had no choice but to pay, for beef. The results intended and achieved by Defendants were higher profit margins (e.g., meat margins) than would have otherwise existed in a competitive market, and injury and damage to Giant Eagle’s businesses and property.” Does the US government want rural America to be dust in the wind? We have to wonder what the future of the domestic food supply chain. Maybe they just think we will be good neighbors and let everyone continue to dump their beef and cattle on us to keep us fed.

I think I am being pretty honest when I say that all of us cattle producers have a lump in our throat thinking about the future. They can splash as much ink as they want on the pages of magazines telling us how great the market will be, but will it be enough to pay off these input prices that we are enduring right now? Just tie another knot in your rope, folks, and hang on, if you have any rope left.

Monte James is zig zagging across the Midwest right now! Today he is at the iconic Legend Buttes Horse Sale out in Crawford, NE. Then he will be back in the air chair on Monday giving the action at the hottest barns in the nation: Presho, Lemmon, North Platte, Creighton, Stockman’s, Bassett, Mobridge, and Platte. Catch them all on CattleUSA.com

Enter our Cattlemen’s Beef Month Giveaway and win prizes like:

A BLACKSTONE Grill from Rick’s Seasoning Salt and his famous season all, a beef bundle from Hy-Vee, EXCLUSIVE concert tickets to COLE SWINDELL Aug 6th hosted by Agtegra, 50# bags of POET Dakota Gold feed pellets, Ben’s Brewing Company beer and seltzer, a Sioux Steel Company mineral feeder, Bottles of MultiMin90 and Brute cooler, gift cards to Young’s Western Wear and BEEF MONTH grilling tools and swag… and more!

Sponsored by: Cattlemen’s Beef Board, Premier Equipment, Jan Busse Ford, Steier Ag, Hy-Vee, CattleUSA.com, The 9 Sale Barns of the the HOT BARN REPORT and the Sandhills Ranch Expo.