Third-quarter agricultural lending at commercial banks continued to decline but showed some signs of stabilizing, said Economists Nathan Kauffman and Ty Kreitman in a release from the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. Farm debt decreased at the slowest pace in two years, Kauffman and Kreitman said.  Non-real estate debt declined at a substantially slower rate … Read More

Cattle markets finally seem to be able to move out from under the specter of the pandemic, said Oklahoma State University Extension Livestock Marketing Specialist, Derrell Peel, in a letter to Extension agents called Cow-Calf Corner. A series of Black Swan events kept the industry on the defensive for more than two years, but the … Read More

As of last Tuesday, managed money, a proxy for large commodity investment funds, had raised their collective net long position in live cattle futures for the third straight week. The data came from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s weekly Commitments of Traders report Monday.  The report, delayed from its usual Friday release date by the … Read More

When fed cattle production costs of various weights in Illinois were compared, there were only small differences in returns, said Bradley Zwilling, agricultural economist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in farmdocdaily. Looking at different factors involved in fed cattle production (outside of costs to produce but including feed and purchase cost of cattle), … Read More

The seasonal feeder cattle price slide in the Northern Plains is steep this fall compared with last year, said Matthew Diersen, risk and business management specialist at South Dakota State University’s Ness School of Management, in a letter to Extension agents from the Livestock Marketing Information Center called In The Cattle Markets. This is the … Read More

Farmland values surged in the third quarter according to Federal Reserve surveys of agricultural credit conditions, said a study by Federal Reserve Economists Nathan Kauffman and Ty Kreitman, in a release. The value of non-irrigated cropland increased by 12% or more in all participating districts, averaging about 15%, the economists said.  The rapid increase also … Read More

Total red meat supplies in freezers on Oct. 31 were up about 1% from September but down about 3% from last year, said the USDA’s monthly Cold Storage report Monday. Total pounds of beef in freezers were up about 9% from September but down about 5% from last year. Frozen pork supplies were down about … Read More