In just a few weeks, the summer beef industry conference will be held in Orlando, FL. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, Cattlemen’s Beef Board, Federation of State Beef Councils, state cattlemen’s associations and just about anyone else connected to the beef industry will meet to set policy and

There have been quite a few political issues on the front burner lately that have a huge effect on the cattle and beef industry. The political winds appear to be shifting, and a pro-business environment seems to be slowly developing. It seems that lawmakers are at least acting serious

The fed cattle markets have been ugly the past month, down $19 in seven weeks. Many market analysts were expecting a decline going into the summer and forecast a typical seasonal decline around 15 percent by July. This average decline would have placed the market in the neighborhood of $105 from

There has been a lot of talk about the National Western Stock Show in Denver, CO, making a move over the past few weeks. The idea of the 105-year-old livestock show moving to a new location has been in the works for the past 10 years and it appears there is some real traction behind the effort. At the NWSS annual board

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) is an interesting organization. It seems that cattle people either love them, hate them, don’t trust them, or don’t care about them. I suppose that every trade group could be viewed this way because no one can agree on everything. Last week, I was following up on a story

It has been interesting watching all the debate about the issues concerning the beef checkoff and the turf war between National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the Cattlemen’s Beef Board over the past several months. The debate essentially revolves around NCBA handling most of the money and

Cattle markets were a bit softer last week, but recovered somewhat by the week’s end. We’ve all been wondering when this market would get a bit softer and it looks like we’re starting to see it. We’re approaching the high-demand summer grilling season and slaughter rates should start to pick up and keep the larger cattle inventory moving, barring any

The bull sales have been awfully good this spring and there is a great deal of optimism in the cow/calf sector of this business. All classes of breeding stock are trading 30 percent higher than a year ago. Many of the bull sales are producing $500 to $800 more per bull than a year ago. Some outfits have seen their bull sale average

Boxed beef may have peaked for a while at $191 two weeks ago; packers lost $5.60 per head on an average buy of $121.29 for last week’s purchases of cattle. Typically, we would see beef production slow down in response to a negative cut out value. However, packers processed an additional 8,000 head last

It’s a perfect world when prices and production go up at the same time and that’s what we’re seeing in the cattle and meat business right now. Year-to-date beef production is up 1.1 percent from a year ago and prices are up some 30 percent. Unfortunately, we’re robbing Peter to pay Paul in this situation because we certainly won’t have enough