Beef Market Update: Political noise, firm demand, and more cattle on feed

This episode of the Beef Market Update is brought to you by Smartlik. When your cattle protein supplements fall short, you lose time, money and herd performance. Smartlik protein tubs deliver consistent self fed nutrition, improving conception, calf health and gains. Feed smarter, not harder. Find your dealer@smartlik.com. And joining me now, the Beef Market Update. As always, it's Anne Wasco of the Gateway Livestock Exchange. Ann, how are you? Pleasure to be with you today. I'm good. It's nice to see you so soon. We spoke even just a few weeks ago, which is good. Now at the same time it has been an incredibly busy seven or eight days on obviously the beef side, the market side, but also on just the uncertainty and political wrangling that's going on. So I want to start there so we can sort of unpack some of that. Obviously, you know, political commentary can have an impact on markets. Where are we sitting right now? What have we learned in the past week? Well, yeah, this, this goes back to last Friday and some comments from the US President in terms of getting beef prices down for US Consumers. And of course the marketplace didn't know, well, you know, what does that mean? We're at, you know, we've been at record high cattle and beef prices here in 2025 and long overdue for the, the cow calf operators of North America. And, and, and so that's been good. And so when you hear, you know, somebody of that level talk about getting prices down, it's the markets didn't know what to think about it. So we've been trying, as you say, to unpack that. By late Wednesday, of course, the USDA had been talking about, we have this plan. And so there was a 13 page white paper released Wednesday, later on Wednesday and it went through a lot of the points that they're going to be working on to, to strengthen the beef industry, which, and, and all of them, I, in my view were not, not bearish certainly, but the market didn't know that. Right, right. So in terms of the futures market, and that's that whole uncertainty piece that we talk about when the markets just get this little, you know, tweet in the middle of the night or whatever, they, they try to respond thinking, you know, could it could be this, it could be that. Right. And how, and, and of course there's lots of misinformation that goes around these kinds of things. And so at the end of the day, I think when the dust all settles, it's not overly bearish news. We heard overnight that there is going to Be more TRQ for Argentinian beef to come into the US and maybe want to talk a little bit about that. But again, these pieces, I think the market will settle down. But it's been a crazy seven days, as you say, for these markets to try to understand what does this mean and how do we trade. We're coming off of all time highs and is this it? Well, and I mean from the producer's perspective, and I've been following along sort of on social media as beef producers sort of react to this news and I think many of them would say, you know, government support for an industry, welcome. Government interference, let's say does as you mentioned, sort of add a level of unknown, of uncertainty, of volatility to it. And that's got a lot of people concerned as we, as you mentioned, as we sort of look into what the plan the US May have when it comes to the beef industry. Yes, these imports, beef from Argentina are part of that. Can you. I know we talked about this a few weeks ago, but before we sort of lose our minds about this, you know, Canada is, is a country that imports beef from other areas for our say ground beef, our burger market kind of idea. So how do sort of imports of certain cuts of beef play even now in our beef industry? Well, well, certainly when we're at this phase of the cattle cycle, which is numbers are down, cow pill is down. And of course that's the product that makes up a lot of our hamburger supply, which Canadian and American consumers love. Half of our consumption is basically in the ground beef form. We're short of that product. So we're not talking about muscle cuts, steaks and whatnot. We're talking about ground beef. And, and so we do import at these times of the cattle cycle and we have been. Canadian imports of beef are going to be up about 20% this year and I think the US will be awfully similar. And that's been going on all year long and it started back in 24. So. And we always import some of that product. We've never had enough lean trim to satisfy the consumer demand in North America for hamburgers. So to, to suggest that we're going to, you know, or see the Americans bring more Argentinian beef of this nature, increase the trq, the tariff rate quota for that as part of it, obviously part of some U S Argentinian deal trade deal. It's not the end of the world. One of two things we're short of it and secondly. Or the US Is short of that product and secondly, it likely just Displaces something else. I mean the market at the end of the day will take care of where the, where the beef is going to come from. So the market sorts these things out. And just going back to your comments leading into this, this part of this segment, this question, you're right, the markets were doing exactly what they should do. They were, supplies are down, prices were up. Give producers a little bit of moisture and great profitability and they will grow the cow herd. Right. So the again that's the message I hear from producers is let these markets work. We don't need these interventions and these uncertainties. We certainly need support. And a lot of those pieces in that 13 page white paper are simply good supports for the industry. So maybe, maybe having all of this on the table and out will settle things down again. But again, a very tumultuous week. It, yes, that is, that is maybe the, the understatement of the day. Now there is of course, and one of the things that gets discussed and we discuss here, of course on the beef market update are, are the larger sort of fundamentals at play. You mentioned some of them, of course, a smaller cowherd, you know, not as many cattle necessarily available. We've still got the Mexico US border closed to cattle movement. So I mean there are still so many bullish fundamentals here to support this industry. And these prices. Yeah, oh no, exactly. So on the supply demand side, the storyline is still very solid. We just don't need this peripheral things creating these uncertainties. And yeah, we need to expect them from time to time, but we sure don't need them every day. Absolutely. Okay. So on that note though, let's run through what the numbers did do this week. Yeah, it's amazing Lindsay, how you know, again getting back to the fundamentals, the supply, the cash market this week said okay, this is these, this is crazy news, but we still traded steady in the US at the end of the day. Live cattle futures though, just from its highs on December, live cattle futures last Thursday ahead of the start of all of this craziness are down $10 US so that did happen. Right. But the cash market this week was steady in the US after all the dust settled, trade in that northern area, Nebraska we're going to call it 239 to 240. So it's steady to down one and dressed at 372, which is steady. So like I say, the markets kind of shook that off the choice cut out that demand piece because I know we've been talking about supply A lot here today, but that demand piece is still solid. The choice cut out last night compared to a week ago was seven dollars, a hundred higher. It closed at 373. And again, so that seasonal, we always watch the seasonals of when demand, you know, kind of improves during the year and when it comes off. Well, we're heading into November and the year end holiday season. That's a great demand time for that holiday ramp as they talk about in the US and so that's still really supporting that whole cutout and it will as we, you know, get close to wrapping up the end of this month. So all that is kind of holding very solid. Cutout was higher. Cash market was steady in the U.S. in Western Canada. We did lose a little bit of ground on the cash cattle. $5 to 505 delivered dress, that's going to be called 3 to $5 lower than last week. We're sitting in a little different shape in Western Canada. We've got packers very comfortable with inventory a little bit, you could even say long on inventory. So cattle feeders are having trouble getting as many cattle marketed as they'd like to. And that showed up in the cam facts on feed report last Friday. Basically showing that feeders in the last while have been really struggling to get enough cattle sold. So the marketing number was down. Meanwhile, look at the calendar. We're into the heat of the the fall run and so placements have been up, marketing's down, placements up. Guess what happens. Your on feed numbers grew and so they were up. Sure. It should be nice to clean these cattle that are ready to go or past ready to go. We need to get those cleaned up to get the the western Canadian market. Back on track, make some room, that's for sure. Now one bright point at least feed is feed costs are down. So yes. Depending on who's listening. This is a beef market. That's right. We're allowed to enjoy lower. We're allowed to enjoy this. And that continues to be the case and. And what an amazing fall. You know, I'm not sure about your neck of the woods, Lindsay, but it's been a great fall here to get things done. We could use it a little. We don't want to mess things up too much. It's been still very dry. I know we talked about lots of moisture in the summertime, but there's really been nothing since. So we'll have to keep an eye on that because that producer that's going to go out and buy a bread cow or keep a heifer bag. He's going to need to see that piece, too. Yeah, absolutely. All right. And Wasco, thank you so much for joining us here on RealAg Radio and of course, the Beef Market Update. Really appreciate it. Okay. Thanks, Lindsey. Have a great weekend. Thank you for downloading this episode of the Beef Market Update, brought to you by smartliq. Backed by research and trusted nationwide, smartliq protein tubs save labor while boosting reproduction, calf health and returns. No wasted effort, just proven results. Feed smarter, not harder. Visit smartliq.com today.