Barbecue season seems to have started early this year, which is a good sign for beef producers.
Sandy Russell, a market analyst and partner with Spring Creek Land and Cattle Consulting, says the beginning of the spring and summer can really set the tone for beef demand for the rest of the season, as that's when consumers start to fire up their grills.
"The early reports coming out of these first long weekends in May on both sides of the border — whether we're talking Canada or the U.S. — have shown really strong movement, which is good news," she says.
"We had been a little lackluster through the early part of the spring in terms of beef movement, so it's been refreshing to see some strong movement in recent weeks of beef products to consumers."
Russell says cattle markets, at times, have been extremely volatile this year. In earlier months, the typical springtime market rally failed to materialize and feeder cattle markets, in particular, were feeling significant price pressure.
But as the year has progressed, Russell says the tone of beef markets has shifted positively with some profitable prices for cow/calf producers on the feeder market.
"Now that we're going into mid-June and through the July, we won't see a lot of feeder cattle move, and we'll see that market pretty stable because of low volumes more than anything, but we will be watching for an uptick as we move into that fall calf run," she says.
The industry will also be looking for signs of expansion in the Canadian cattle inventory. While many have pegged 2016 to be a year of expansion, Russell says no substantial evidence of an expansion has materialized yet.
Source : Portageonline