Beef prices hit record high

wjla.com ^ | 1/10/14

[SoFloFreeper]

Select grade beef has hit a record high this week. The weather has an impact, but that’s not all...

Beef prices will increase by 2.5 to 3 percent this year, according to the USDA.

“For some peoples' diet it’s gonna be a pretty big chunk of change,” says George Lesznar of Harvey’s Market in D.C.

U.S. cattle cost more because of a rebound effect from several years of drought in major producing places like Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas. With the increased cost of feed some ranchers reduced their herds. The USDA called America’s cattle herd the smallest in 60 years. Large meat companies are paying record prices for cattle now, and that price will soon be passed along to the consumer.

“I’ll see what the prices are and if that means I have to cut back on the meats I eat,” says Amy Batchelor.

[Yosemitest]

CORRECTION:

"shinned"

Should be "SKINNED."

[cuban leaf]

Around here we hire butchers to slaughter our livestock. That said, I’m in a band that is all immediate family members, other than me. They raise their own goats, pigs and cattle and slaughter all of them themselves. Incredible bacon!

[Yosemitest]

If you "semi fast" your steer, but HIRE the animal slaughtered, make damn sure the YOU get YOUR beef
and not just an equivalent weight of meat in trade.

[cuban leaf]

That is a common issue around here. ;-)

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***Obamanomics. ***

Actually it was two years of drought which depleted the cattle on the range. Ranchers had to sell because there was no grass, the loss of two years of grain and hay. Cattlemen are now holding their cattle trying to build up their herds.

Then factor in the loss of cattle in the snow storms in South Dakota and this current “polar vortex”.

One of my friends was telling me how high cattle were right now. He is feeding 8 round bales of hay a day to his cattle as the snow and ice were terrible.

Remember, cattle prices also went through the roof back in 1974.

[Lazamataz]

Walrus is right. Every product is going up at insane rates.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Do not allow a beef cow to eat on grass with wild onions in it! The meat will stink of onions.

[Ben Ficklin]

"cattle's primary food source"

That would be grass, not corn.

They feed them corn at the feed lot to add fat to the meat so that they can sell them as choice or prime. The article begins by saying select beef, which was not fed corn, is going up.

[Balding_Eagle]

Based on your argument, corn prices, the main ingredient in beef production, should be at all time highs.

Instead they are at the lowest point in years, in the $4 per bushel range, down from the $7 to $8 of the past years.

This drop is from an oversupply of corn.

What would you expect to happen to beef prices?

[Ben Ficklin]

That $1.99 ground beef is last weeks rump roast or chuck roast that didn’t sell so they ground it up to sell at the cheaper price to cut their losses.

[riri]

Go grocery shopping with your wife next week. The prices keep rising while the packages keep shrinking.

Right you are.

As long as the "protected class" doesn't feel the pain--there will be no pitchforks in the street. What's a third of the country getting free food now? Makes no difference to them if a box of Froot Loops is 32 oz costing $2.50 or 10 ounces and costing $5.25. They don't even notice. Don't even care.

[Yosemitest]

Wrong>
Commercial raised beef are penned and fed dried corn grain, under a roof, to speed up putting on weight, and preferably Iowa Grain corn.

[1rudeboy]

For what it’s worth (pun intended), shrinking package sizes show up as inflation. So if your coffee can shrinks to 34oz from 36oz, and the price remains level, it counts.

[Yosemitest]

The current numbers of beef cattle in the United States is low.
However Argentina beef and other counties may not be as low as we are.
My guess is it will take about 3 to 5 years to resupply the numbers to the herds.
Normally a cow has to be at least 2 years old before she can start calving.
And then if the farmer is trying to increase his herd numbers, he'll only sell the yearling bulls or make steers out of them at about 6 months old, and then sell them at a year to a year and a half old for stocker steers.
The cattleman will normally replace his "Seed Bull" between every three to five years, and won't sell it for slaughter, but to another cattleman to " seed" his herd.

I expect beef prices to remain high for several years, not just because of the number of cattle and the cost of feed, but also because of the price of our Dollar against other currencies and the Democrats policy of continued devaluing it and printing"more dollars out of thin air.

[Balding_Eagle]

So why post the bogus ethanol argument?

[Yosemitest]

Bogus?
You don't know much about politics or beef cattle and their feed!

[Balding_Eagle]

You may be right about beef, as I’ve raised less than a thousand, but of all the Freepers, I’ve probably raised more hogs than anyone else, 250,000, so I do know a little.

I also know you didn’t answer my original question, which tells most people that you can’t do so without either lying, or revealing some agenda.

[Yosemitest]

When you have something intelligent to say, get back to me.
There is very little hogs have in common with cattle, and I've raised both.
Not only that, I cut meat for three years at a major grocery store that worked on volume sales, with a target profit margin of one and a half percent of gross.

Now read and learn.

Corn ethanol is about corn-state politics

Ethanol: One Market for a Growing Corn Supply

Corn for Food, Not Fuel

Study Says Ethanol Increasing Food Prices

Smaller crop, same ethanol production?


FarmEcon LLC A source of global farming and food systems analysis

eef industry battling grain prices, ethanol production

Ethanol Demand Threatens Food Prices
Rising corn prices are already affecting everything from the cost of tortillas in Mexico City to the cost of producing eggs in the United States.

Study shows ethanol production is affecting food prices

Ethanol Production to Hit Beef Production

Go back to something you say you know, SLOPPING HOGS.

[Former Proud Canadian]

I know. Like I said, smells good, tastes good, looks good, no pink slime, nobody got sick. What do you want for $1.99?

[Balding_Eagle]

LOL!

I’m over the target!

PS, never ‘slopped’ a hog in my life. Most were fed with computer controlled equipment.

Oh, you forgot to include a link to the Nebraska beef feed trials which showed the big lie used 95% of the time regards how much corn really is used for ethanol.