USDA’s monthly cattle on feed report for February will be released tomorrow. Analysts’ pre-report consensus estimates are for the total inventory on feed to be 98.4 percent of a year ago. Those estimates imply an on-feed inventory of 11.53 million head.
The total inventory on feed may be surprisingly large given the state of the cattle herd, as there was one fewer slaughter day in January than a year ago, along with a smaller January fed-cattle slaughter and more placements than marketings. Further, there is aggressive placement of beef-on-dairy-bred feeders, and cattle are being kept on feed longer. Thus, total inventory is forecast to be down only 1.5 percent. However, if the pre-report estimates are accurate, this would be a...
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...
