Cash trade—or even the rumor of it—was basically non-existent throughout the first half of last week, with not even 1,500 head sold by Wednesday evening. Packer bids only developed late Wednesday, and at $123-124 live and $198 dressed, they lagged behind offers by $5-7.

The April Cattle on Feed report (COF) came out Friday, April 19. The report covers numbers of cattle on feed in feedlots of 1,000 head or greater capacity as of April 1, and the number placed and marketed during March. The biggest surprises came from the number of cattle placed, which was well above both year ago levels and pre-report estimates.

There seems to be a chill on cattle markets…both literally and figuratively. Cattle markets remain hunkered down due to weather and other impacts. The unrelenting cold, wet spring continues to have a variety of impacts on both the supply and demand sides of cattle and beef markets.

There was an interesting game going on in the cash fed market last week. Early in the week, word from packers was that they were going to pull April contract cattle for their needs and avoid the higher cash market. This led analysts to predict a steady to down $1 cash trade.

The most recent Crop Progress report came out Monday, April 1. The report—the first of this year—showed sorghum plantings as of March 31 in line with the recent past and oat plantings were below last year but on par with the fouryear average.

The vast majority of cash fed trade took place on Thursday morning and early afternoon ahead of the market closures of Good Friday. The small volume of sales earlier in the week developed in the South Plains at $125 live and $202 dressed, but the bulk of the trade on Thursday went for $127-129 live and $203-204 dressed.

The most recent Cattle on Feed report was released Friday, March 22 by USDA. The report covered the number of cattle on feed as of March 1 in feedlots with a 1,000-head or greater capacity, as well as the number placed on feed in, and marketed from, such feedlots during the course of February.

Some of the largest increases, percentage wise, come from increased planting in Arkansas, Mississippi and other Delta states as farmers switch from cotton to corn. USDA expects farmers in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota and Nebraska to plant slightly less corn than last year.

The book “Who Will Feed China?: Wake-up Call for a Small Planet,” authored by Lester Brown in 1995, was a surprising wake-up call about world food security. Brown claimed that food production was not growing fast enough to feed China’s increasing population, which could result in rising food prices in China and the rest of the world.

The USDA Cold Storage report came out Friday, March 22 and reported on the red meat and poultry in cold storage for February. Overall red meat in cold storage was up 3 percent in February 2013 versus February 2012 with 1.15 billion pounds. This represented 52.