Shares of JBS SA, the world’s largest meat producer, plunged to a 15-month low after Brazil’s public prosecutor accused executives including Chairman Joesley Batista of financial crimes involving a series of loans made to related companies.
A mountain of meat has ended the longest rally in U.S. cattle prices since at least the 1960s, when baby boomers and McDonald’s Corp. ushered in the American burger boom.
Farmers across the fertile pampas are getting ready to empty silo bags of corn and soybeans after years of withholding part of their crop in anger over tax policies.
For JBS, the Venezuelan market now has special significance. It has a $2.1 billion contract and provides almost half the meat and a quarter of the chicken eaten by 28 million carnivorous Venezuelans.
Australia’s live cattle shipments to Indonesia are set to plunge this quarter after the biggest buyer cut its import quota by 80 percent to rely more on domestic supply.
Squeezed by 16 months of falling prices and a shrinking export market, French cattle ranchers turned to protests this week at 18 slaughterhouses around the country.
