Current Cattle Market Daily Headlines for Monday, May 18, 2020

Mackenzie Johnston

6 years ago

R-Calf urges opening of CRP lands to slow cattle supply chain

Last week, R-Calf sent a letter to Agriculture Sonny Perdue asking Mr. Perdue to consider opening 24 million acres of land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP.)
R-Calf feels that opening these acres up would help alleviate the backlog in live cattle supply that has been caused by Covid-19 reducing slaughter.
The group estimates that our cattle industry currently has upwards of 500,000 fed cattle backed up in feedlots.
This proposal would allow producers to use their CRP ground for emergency grazing in hopes of potentially slowing down the live cattle supply chain long enough for the bottleneck between feedlots and packers to be eased.

Many consumers have been noticing increased prices at their grocery store, and they aren’t wrong.
Food prices saw their largest monthly increase in 46 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
April Consumer Price Index:
- Food prices away from home jumped 3.5% over the past year.
- Between March and April, all categories of food have increased 1.5%.
- We haven’t seen an increase like this since February 1974.
When it comes to meat products, consumers saw an increase of 4.5% in April

Last week beef production was estimated at 405.2 million lbs., according to the USDA. This is up 10.2% compared the previous week and 23% lower than a year ago.
Choice boxed beef: $434.32 (-$16.60)
Select boxed beef: $419.06 (-$18.34)