World Perspectives
livestock

Livestock Industry Margins

The big story in livestock industry margins continues to be the record-breaking weakness in beef packer profits, which fell another $50/head last week to -$193/head. The surge in cattle prices and declines in slaughter weights more than offset gains in beef values and left packers with the lowest per-head profits since WPI’s records began. Feedlot margins improved for both placements and closeout sales with the rally live cattle futures and physical fed cattle values supporting the profitability gains. Southern Plains closeout margins are near five-year seasonal record highs presently. Hog packer margins dipped slightly last week as processors were able to push hog prices lower while the pork cutout retreated from the prior week. Hog...

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Cattle on Feed for Dec 2025

USDA reports U.S. Cattle on Feed down 2 percent in feedlots with capacity of 1,000 or more head to total 11.7 million head on December 1, 2025.  Placements in feedlots during November totaled 1.60 million head, 11 percent below 2024.  Marketings of during November totaled 1.52 million...

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Summary of Futures

Mar 26 Corn closed at $4.47/bushel, up $0.0325 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Wheat closed at $5.155/bushel, up $0.0575 from yesterday's close.  Jan 26 Soybeans closed at $10.5325/bushel, up $0.04 from yesterday's close.  Mar 26 Soymeal closed at $301.9/short ton, up $0.8 from y...

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livestock

Beef Market Recap and Outlook

On 21 November, Tyson Foods, one of the largest beef packing companies in the United States, announced it will close its cattle slaughter facility in Lexington, Nebraska, and reduce its beef operations in Amarillo, Texas, down to a single, full-capacity shift. Based on estimated slaughter at bo...

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From WPI Consulting

Communicating importance of value-added products

Facing increasing pressure to quantify the value of export promotion efforts to investors, a U.S. industry organization retained WPI to develop a quantitative model that better communicated the importance of exports. The resulting model concluded that value-added meat exports contributed $0.45 cents per bushel to the price of corn, increasing support for that sector’s financial support of WPI’s client. In addition to serving the red meat industry with this type of analysis, WPI has generated similar deliverables for the U.S. soybean and poultry/egg industries.

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