John Nalivka

John Nalivka is the president of Sterling Marketing, Inc., which provides economic research and market advisory services to the livestock and meat industries. He became affiliated with Sterling in 1991 as executive vice president and he has owned the company since 1994. Nalivka serves clients across the red meat supply chain from producers to end-users.

Latest Stories
Through the week ending March 26th, beef cow slaughter year-to-date is 16% higher than a year earlier and the highest since 1986, and we’re on pace to slaughter 12.3% of the cowherd.
While inflation has become a focus of many recent news reports, there is much confusion about how inflation affects farm and ranch income.
Inflation has hit consumers hard and drawn the attention of the national media. With increasing media attention on climate change, do activists see inflation as a way to encourage Americans to reduce beef consumption?
Cattle prices are improving in all regions as cattle numbers have declined. Expansion and continuation of the current drought could cut cattle numbers even further and produce higher cattle prices.
While markets are one component of the cattle cycle, the critical factor driving the cattle cycle and the cow-calf sector of the cattle industry is forage.
Production efficiency is key to sustainability including profitability, both at the ranch and for the industry as a whole, but that production efficiency doesn’t end at the ranch gate.
Is the Biden Administration’s plan for the beef industry workable, or does it ignore the economics of market structure and pricing across the meat industry supply chain?
With 2022 nearly upon us, and bringing the prospect of a solid cattle market and profits to cow-calf producers not realized since 2015, now is a good time for ranchers to rethink their business in terms of time frame.
Changes in the beef supply chain in recent years have had an increasingly greater market impact. Pricing cattle off the cutout would provide a negotiating a formula that captures a relevant share of the total value.
As the marketing year winds down, Sterling Marketing president John Nalivka provides an overview of his market outlook for 2022 and beyond.