Cattle producers enjoyed record high prices throughout most of the summer.
At the end of July we saw record highs on everything from fat cattle to record highs on cows, yearling and calves right to retail prices to wholesale prices.
Anne Wasko, a Cattle Market Analyst with Cattle Trends at Eastend, Saskatchewan says tight supplies, strong demand, and lower feed costs all played a contributing factor.
She says while we saw some record prices the market is starting to back off:
"Markets don't go straight up forever, I think the market today is going to try to find some of those levels, kind of all of the good news of less pork, less poultry, bigger corn crop, all of those things have come into ther market place, shot the market to its record levels and now we are kind of trying to sort things out from here. All of that good news has been played in, now we start to play forward as we move to 2015," said Wasko.
Wasko says markets are always looking way ahead of us, way ahead of today and tomorrow’s decisions and she believes as producers you need to start thinking about making decisions the same way at home when you sell cattle.
"Not a big surprise, there is no question, the markets are looking at producing less supply of beef on the front end here. At the same time as we go around the next corner, all eyes are starting to get focused on more pork and more poultry later this year and into next. Markets are always looking way in advance of what they see happening today," said Wasko.
Wasko says the feeder cattle and calf side of the market will see the least amount of pressure for the short run but knowing we’re going to see markets come off on the fat cattle side.
Source: PortageOnline