Kansas feedlot sales of slaughter-ready cattle to packing plants rose in June, a seasonal move that falls well short of last year’s June sales. The data came from a monthly Kansas State University Extension Service survey of selected feedlots around the state, which was compiled and extrapolated by the Livestock Marketing Information Center in Denver … Read More
Farm Loan Growth Includes Nonperforming Loans, Fed Says
Growth in the average size of farm operating loans boosted agricultural lending in the second quarter of this year, as did growth in nonperforming loans, said a report by Nathan Kauffman, vice president of the Federal Reserve’s Omaha branch, and Ty Kreitman, assistant economist at the bank. However, the overall increase in financial stress in … Read More
Using Options To Hedge Cattle
Beef magazine recently ran a series of articles by private industry consultant Nevil Speer in which he discussed the basics of using futures and options to help cattle producers better understand the mechanics of implementing risk management. Beef has graciously allowed us to re-run those articles. This is the second of the series, edited for … Read More
Funds Nudge Long Cattle Position Higher
Large commodity investment firms, known as managed money, nudged their collective net long live cattle futures position higher for the third straight time in the week ended Tuesday, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The data came from the CFTC’s weekly Commitments of Traders report Friday. The report showed that managed money’s … Read More
Choice/Select Spread Record Wide
The USDA’s wholesale spread between the price of choice beef and select beef is at record-wide levels and appears to be widening – likely the result of strong beef demand, said Nevil Speer, industry consultant in Bowling Green, KY. Beef production this year is up, and carcass grading was not hurt going through the harsh … Read More
USDA Reports May Show Over-Estimated Cattle Herd; Economist
While there were no great surprises in either the USDA Cattle on Feed or the mid-year Cattle (inventory) reports there were a few items of interest that, taken together, might suggest the cattle herd has been a little overestimated the last couple of years. Texas A&M Extension Economist David Anderson said so in a letter … Read More
Some Feedlots Replace Corn With Wheat
If there’s a seasonality to replacing some of the corn in feedlot cattle diets with wheat, it’ll happen in the summer. And this is what is happening this year. Summer is when the winter wheat harvest is done, and the corn harvest is a couple of months away. Supplies of the two are out of … Read More