When comparing the current cattle market to that of a year ago, Jim Robb, director of the Livestock Marketing Information Center, says there are several year-over-year improvements, but the key factor is keeping the market current.
“We’re really not setting up the industry as we started to do this time last year,” he says. “We had very high feeder prices last year, and the incentive for cattle feeders was to hold the animals on feed because they really couldn’t make money by bringing in animals.”
Robb says recent marketing rates and slaughter weights are both indicators that cattle are moving through the marketing system at a more historical pace, compared to the slower movement of a year ago.
“We don’t set ourselves up for the delayed marketing and then the snowball effect that we had last year in terms of the cattle market,” he says. “I think we’re setting a foundation for not being as dramatically negative as a year ago.”
Although cattle prices are lower than this time last year, Robb says it’s less likely the markets will unravel like in the fourth quarter of 2015.
“It does not look like ’16 is a repeat of ’15,” he says. “I think that’s important for producers to keep in the back of their mind.”
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