THEE Hot Barn Report!
Heard ONLY on American radio stations across the nation and online at hotbarnreport.com!
Where’s the beef? Welcome to this special edition of Hot Barn Report!
I wanted to unpack some interesting facts today that seem to leave all the puzzle pieces up in the air. The American consumer is still paying inflated prices for beef at the grocery store. Beef that they largely do not know where it even came from because we still lack Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, but that is for another day.
I have talked in the past how arguments for free market fundamentals pretty much crumble when talking about the broken cattle market, but let’s approach it from the consumer side coming back up the supply chain and see if we can make any more sense of this. These high retail beef prices would signal a shortage of beef in the supply chain, but that doesn’t seem to be the case at all.
If we work backwards from the consumer, maybe we can find, “where’s the beef?” 2022 is posting remarkable cold storage reports. Infact, total pounds of beef in the freezer is up 29% year to date over last year according to Cornell University. According the USDA chart, we are beating the pants off of the last 3 years of beef cold storage totals.
So, we have beef in the freezer, let’s go a little further up the supply chain and look at live cattle. While I have been preaching for the last weeks that the nation’s cowherd is shrinking, we have not seen it show up in the feedlots, yet. Infact, in last week’s cattle on feed report the marketings of June fed cattle were 2% higher than in 2021. Total cattle on feed inventory as of July 1, 2022 was slightly above 2021. Granted the bulk of that increase was impressive heifer inventory which will lead to deeper concerns in the shrinking cow/calf sector, but all signs are telling us we have beef in the freezer, and we have more cattle in the feedlot than last year ready to soon be beef in the freezer.
So if we have a super strong inventory of cold storage and current and strong inventory of live cattle, why are we importing around 130,000 head of live cattle a month and importing so much beef, ahem, imports from Brazil are up over 350% over last year, it seems we have our own! Well, that is where the global trade market comes in. And while exports of beef have gained some recent head winds, it has been at the cost of the American consumer and the American cattle producer caught in the crosshairs paying high prices at the beef counter and receiving a cash cattle price in the $1.40’s. So even when we work backwards from the consumer, up the supply chain, it sure does leave a lot of questions and a lot of holes in market fundamentals. Doesn’t sound like much of a free market, more of a managed market, that keeps both cattle producers and consumers on an economic rollercoaster.
Monte will be back tomorrow with all the action from the hottest barns in the nation that power this program: Torrington Livestock Market, Presho Livestock, Lemmon Livestock, Bassett Livestock Auction, North Platte Stockyards, Creighton Livestock Market, Stockman’s Livestock, Mobridge Livestock, Platte Livestock, and Ogallala Livestock Auction Market!
Welcome to another edition of the epic saga known as the Hot Barn Report
We continue to expand to new towns like Waverly Iowa, Sturgis South Dakota, Hettinger North Dakota and Broken Bow Nebraska. If you think your local salebarn has the right stuff to be a HBR “price discovery” reporting barn email Monte James at mjames@youragnetwork.com.
The ALL STAR lineup
🔥Stockmen’s Livestock – Fat Cattle TUESDAY & Feeders on WEDNESDAY
🔥Platte Livestock Market – Hogs, Sheep & Goats on MONDAY & Feeders on WEDNESDAY
🔥Creighton Livestock Market – Feeder Calf Sale TUESDAY
🔥Bassett Livestock Auction – WEDNESDAY Sales
🔥North Platte Stockyards – Sales on TUESDAY
🔥Ogallala Livestock Auction Market – Sales on WEDNESDAY
🔥Lemmon Livestock, INC. – Sales on WEDNESDAY
🔥Mobridge Livestock – Sales on TUESDAY & THURSDAY
🔥Presho Livestock Auction – Sales on THURSDAY & MONTHLY horse sale
🔥Torrington Livestock – Sales on FRIDAY
🔥Buy ’em up online at CattleUSA.com
The HOTTEST sale barns in America
See more at HOT BARN REPORT
As always buy ’em up online at CattleUSA.com
