With Easter retail orders mostly complete, the pork cutout, especially hams, is under pressure. From the beginning of March, the ham primal has dropped 16 percent; the only other cut with a bigger drop is the belly.
Through last week, hog slaughter was up 1.6 percent over the same 10 week period in 2022, but pork production was up only 0.9 percent due to lighter slaughter weights. This would suggest softer demand is an issue for pork given the drop in cutout values.
Hams in cold storage at the end of February were 101 percent of last year, and 108 percent of the end of January, i.e., the previous month. Bone-in hams were 105 percent of last year and 135 percent of the previous month. Bellies in cold storage at the end of Februar...
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...
