Outlooks

Beef herd expansion in the US <a href="http://www.cattlenetwork.com/content.asp?contentid=154808">is still on hold</a> so the outlook for beef prices holding up is good. That's good news to me the producer, we won't talk about you the consumers. The funny thing is that weather is still the driving force here just like it is on fires recently. Everybody keeps trying to blame the fires on a lot of different things but in truth, the weather is driving it as it's driving the cattle herd. The ability for producers to expand has been hampered by the continuing drought conditions in the US.<br />n<br />nThere are places where there has been years of drought affecting production but severe hits seem to move around the country in waves causing people to sell mother cows stifling any increase in the beef herd expansion. Combined with continued good demand for beef this is all good news for me but nothing surprising. The writings been on the wall for a while now but it's good to see the numbers.<br />n<br />nIt would have been nicer to see a little higher prices for calves this fall. Some people would say they are high enough but with the cost of energy and feed I'm not so sure. I think the reason they stayed at last year levels and didn't go up any was that feed prices are so high due to the drive to turn our food into fuel. Everybody knows my opinion of that so I won't go into it but I don't like it.<br />n<br />nThis news is sure to make a lot of cattle producers happy. I don't blame them, good news is always nice.<br />n<br />n<strong>We are all primary numbers divisible only by ourselves. Jean Guitton </strong>