Livestock and food

[the big wheel]

So listening to American news fox actually there is a scare rising over empty shelves for staple food products. Not sure if that will affect us.

But I see locally pork beef bison producers near me that are getting 2/3 some times half of what the market was pre covid yet prices in store haven’t gone down have gone up actually. Who is making this money in between? Local grocer says same amount of meat sold as always.
Pork and bison bison guys can’t give it away yet I see pork from Germany the uk in on the shelves wtf?

[Blaithin]

Can’t comment on pork or bison numbers and I don’t usually pay close attention to beef numbers, especially fats. However as it’s the time of year that I sell my calves I do watch those numbers consistently. They seem a little low this year, more noticeable in the heifer prices, but not ridiculously low. And I do believe I’ve heard some rumblings about grain shortages which may be keeping the feedlot buyers from blasting away at sales.

Also the brief shut downs of the plants had to have made them a bit flinchy. Fat cattle aren’t quite so reliant on times like hogs or chickens but you still don’t want to be sitting on pens and pens of fats ready to go and have no plant.

The stores have a different consumer base than the farmers. What the consumers at a grocery store are concerned about and willing to pay is always going to be different than what the plants are concerned about and willing to pay and what the feedlots are concerned about and willing to pay. The unfortunate thing for the cow calf farmers are that they’re at the start of the path so any and all concerns have the potential to affect them. Shit rolls downhill and all that.

(Theres also a number of large feedlots I know of in the last few years, that have switched to dairy calves from the states to bring up here and fatten. They will no longer be buying our calves and contributing to auction prices but will be selling to the plants and contributing to what the plants can intake.)

Don’t think it can all be blamed on Covid. Just normal market fluctuations from a variety of factors. Calf and fat prices are almost never reflected in shelf prices.

[helmsdale]

Spitballing here...

Depressed prices for livestock destined for feeders is likely a symptom of tight feeder margins. Probably a couple factors, a) being a possible backlog from slaughter facility shutdowns (not overly sure of this, but it's not like we have a significant amount of excess capacity in the system that could chew through weeks, let alone months of decreased slaughter capacity), which would drive down the price of fats (unsure of where prices sit currently), and b) high feed prices.

Im thinking high feed prices are likely a symptom of Chinese demand... Haven't delved into it terribly deeply as I'm up to my eyeballs in other forms of shit at the moment. We seen feed prices fall back when Swine flu was devastating chinese feeders... They seem to be bulking up on animal feed and protein, so that would indicate to me that they have somewhat of a handle on that issue. So long as those prices remain high, returns down the livestock foodchain are likely to remain diminished.

Anybody got something more solid on any of these points?

[wmoebis]

What are the daily slaughter numbers? Just wondering if labour is am issue or what is happening with TFW?

[the big wheel]

Those points make sense. In addition though
How does it make sense to put pork on a ship and all the transfer from Europe and end up in a grocer here and be cheaper than here when producer can’t give it away at any price? Doesn’t make environmental sense or economic to me. They have worse covid problems there yet their slaughter facilities must be going full bore to export?
Feed barley would have influence but is it really that big of a factor it sure isn’t in a bottle of beer.
Maybe wrong comparison.

Got a pm from a bison guy who says it’s more a matter of rhe big ranches being connected to the states and can sell all their product and are buying from the local smaller ranches who aren’t connected at a discount. Screw the small guy scenerio.

In beef the neighbor says yin can move it but market so volatile it’s dangerous week to week to sell via auction.
And it’s still no where relative to the price charged in the supermarket. Raised prices.

An election Nd not a word fro either party here!!!

I m just concerned we keep screwing around that we don’t loose locals and end up being subject to foreign markets is what worries me.