Enjoy a relatively cheap aged Angus steak before it's too late.

[waybomb]

The Rooskies are starting to buy meat from us in a big way. They are paying over the daily sheet prices.

Go buy some steak and enjoy while it is cheap. The big boys will start diverting meat to Russia. The door just opened up for South Korea as well.

Cow inventory is way down. It all adds up to breeders are going to make a lot of money for a while. Calves will carry a premium price.

Aw, jeez - mods, fix my typo in the title. I guess I was playing the change one letter game...

 

[Doc]

I saw a report about people in Korea protesting against US Beef. Believing the meat is tainted with mad cow.

Any idea why there is a shortage of cattle? Does ethanol have anything to do with it?

 

[thcri]

I saw a report about people in Korea protesting against US Beef. Believing the meat is tainted with mad cow.

That is fine, it can stay here since there is a shortage already.

Any idea why there is a shortage of cattle? Does ethanol have anything to do with it?

Yes ethanol does. I have nothing to back this up other than what some farmer friends are telling me but they can make more money selling their corn rather than keeping it for cows. The price of meat will be going up and now with all the flooding of the corn belt you will see prices really going up of both corn and beef

murph

 

[waybomb]

The protesting is over. It was politics, not about the beef. The beef is on its way. But they want, I believe, 20 month old and down, no older. Or it may be 30 month. Anyway, it is hysteria, not based on fact.

Last year had low commodity price, so farmers backed off on growing. They were loosing money

Right now, pork is up a bit, but you'll never see it this cheap again for a long time. For a year or more, the farmers have been basically making no money on the pigs. So they backed off. The herd is shrinking. And foriegners are buying our meat. The trade balance will get real good real soon. Lotsa stuff going overseas that never had a chance before.

The chicken folks are also backing off, but chickens only need a few months to market, so that market seems to swing quickly. But we don't do chicken, so I could be way off on that.

We buy beef and pork trimmings. Last year Beef 50s were at about 55 bucks. This week they are at something like 97 bucks. Lucky for us, we priced to customers at market price, not fixed. But there's a lot of outfits out there puckering up right now because they thought they could play the market.