USDA released the monthly Cattle on Feed report today. Placements were the only category off from the consensus expectation. The range of estimates was a low of 95 percent to a high of 102.4 percent. Actual placements were 104 percent of May 2022.
For the year, January through May, placements are down only 238,000 head and are 97.5 percent of last year. Placements last month were the highest for May since 2019 and well above 2014 and 2015 at similar low points in the cattle cycle.
As WPI noted yesterday, imports from Mexico and Canada are up this year, which looking at the state level data, certainly is a contributing factor. Placements were up in Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Kansas over last month in the Southern Plains,...
What You Need to Know Today: There has already been a strong run of flash soybean sales announcements in recent weeks, but more than 1.4 MMT reported this morning is an exceptionally large single-day total with major implications for the market. If the sales to China and unknown destinations w...
On Friday, at 6:57 AM, President Donald Trump announced, via a social media post, a 90-day window during which up to 300,000 metric tons of product for ground beef could be imported outside of tariff-rate quotas—a move aimed at bringing down costs for American consumers. This is the secon...
