CME Group

USDA Introduces First Market News Mobile App Providing Instant Access to Market Information

Tue, 01 Feb 2022 19:50:41 GMT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1, 2022 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced a new USDA Market News Mobile Application, providing producers and everyone else in the supply chain with instant access to current and historical market information. The initial version of the free app includes nearly 800 livestock, poultry, and grain market reports, with additional commodities added throughout the coming year.

“USDA is focused on building more resilient and transparent markets and is taking steps to promote competition and fairer prices from farmers to consumers,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “This new Market News app helps create a more level playing field for small and medium producers by delivering critical market information to them where they are, when they need it.”

Producers and other users can search for markets based on their location, by state, or by commodity. They also can add market reports to their favorites for easier access, share reports via text or email, subscribe to reports, and receive real-time notifications when a new report is published. For additional data analysis, the app lets you share the source data behind the reports via email as well.

“One of the best features of the app is its simplicity,” Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Jenny Lester Moffitt said. “The USDA Market News app was designed with small producers in mind. Regardless of whether you market livestock throughout the year or once a year, you can navigate through this easy-to-use tool and access the information you need on your mobile phone. Built-in tutorials help first-time users get the most out of their experience.”

There are both iOS and Android versions available to download through the Apple and Google Play stores. The iOS version is available now (download here) and the Android version will be available later this week. Search for “USDA Market News Mobile Application” to download the app and begin exploring its potential. USDA will continue to expand the features of the app, including adding market information for all other commodities in the future.

USDA Market News continues to expand its tools and resources to ensure producers benefit from the vast amount of market information available and understand how this information can provide actionable insight to inform marketing decisions at the farm and other points in the supply chain. This mobile app allows producers to access market data and reports, regardless of where they are, more effectively, efficiently, and on demand.

India’s Beef Boom Threatened as Old Tensions Flare

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 05:42:40 GMT

As a centuries-old dispute over beef intensifies in India, cattle transporter Shafiullah Mohammad Sharif Shah is caught in the middle.

Hindu vigilantes set fire to one of Shah’s trucks in December as it carried six water buffalo to a government-owned slaughterhouse outside Mumbai, he said. They beat up the driver and set the animals free, according to Shah. With such attacks becoming common, business has slowed so much that Shah says his five trucks may be repossessed if he can’t make a monthly loan payment of 150,000 rupees ($2,390).

While India is dominated by 1 billion Hindus, who revere dairy cows as sacred and hold vegetarianism as an ideal, some states still allow them to be slaughtered for meat, and output has surged from buffalo that have little religious significance. Annual beef exports are the world’s second-largest, jumping 11- fold in a decade to $4.35 billion. During the past year, hard- line Hindu groups have stepped up efforts to end cow slaughter and combat a network of small, illegal plants that produce cattle meat for domestic use.

“The atmosphere in the abattoir is very tense,” said Shah, 38. “We’re being harassed everywhere and the attacks are worsening. The industry doesn’t know how to deal with this and everyone from transporters to dealers and farmers is scared.”

Beef Ban

Vigilantes haven’t made any distinction between buffalo and dairy cows, targeting transporters of both. Trucks carrying cattle are often blocked by the activists, who snatch drivers’ phones, beat them up and hand over the cattle to animal welfare centers, according to the All Maharashtra Cattle Merchants Association. Attacks have increased since the May election of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose Hindu-backed Bharatiya Janata Party favors tighter restrictions on cow slaughtering, which is legal in five of India’s 29 states.

“Our demand is to ban cow slaughter in India,” Surendra Kumar Jain, joint general secretary of Vishva Hindu Parishad, a religious group affiliated with BJP, said Feb. 25 by phone from Rohtak in northern Haryana state.

Maharashtra, the second-most populous state with 112 million people and home to the nation’s biggest city, Mumbai, on March 2 banned the possession and sale of beef. The meat that previously was legal in restaurants and sidewalk food stalls now carries a maximum punishment of five years in prison and threatens to fan tensions between Hindus and minority Christians and Muslims.

Devendra Fadnavis, the chief minister of Maharashtra, did not respond to two calls made on Tuesday to his mobile and office phones, seeking comment on the attacks.

Activists Empowered

Supporters of Modi, including right-wing Hindu groups Bajrang Dal and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have called for a national beef ban and activists have targeted legal businesses to disrupt production. While the organizations aren’t seeking to halt buffalo slaughter, they are promoting vegetarianism and an end to buffalo-meat exports, arguing the industry uses valuable water and land.

“Since the new government has come to power, incidents of harassment of our trucks have grown,” said Khaliq Qureshi, chairman of the All Maharashtra Cattle Merchants Association in Mumbai. “Political parties and activists feel more confident now because they feel that their own government is in power.”

In the past 10 months, about 600 incidents of harassment were recorded in Maharashtra, the third-largest producer of buffalo beef, compared with 200 to 300 cases annually in the previous five years, Qureshi said in an interview on Feb. 27. The numbers are probably higher, he said, because traders and transporters often don’t report the attacks to the association.

Export Expansion

The growing no-beef agenda threatens to disrupt an industry that expanded under secular governments that promoted agriculture in India, which saw farm exports grow faster than any other nation over the past decade. The country is the world’s largest democracy, which includes an estimated 176 million Muslims, more than any country except Indonesia.

While beef and pork are taboo at many Indian eateries, including McDonald’s Corp. and Burger King outlets, some restaurants serve beef and others offer it off the menu. The meat is cheaper than pork or chicken, so it is a popular source of protein for the poor.

The country ranks sixth in the world among beef consumers, and demand is up 4.2 percent in the past five years. Much of the industry’s growth has been in exports to Vietnam, China and Africa. Shipments will total 1.95 million metric tons this year, more than triple what was exported a decade earlier, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated in an October report. Only Brazil sells more overseas.

Hindu Opposition

The beef expansion has upset some Hindus, who revere cows regarded as an earthly embodiment of the goddess Kamadhenu. The animals often roam freely and are fed outside temples. In rural areas, home owners cover floors and walls with cow dung to prevent pollution, and some spray cow urine indoors as a purifier.

During his election campaign, Modi said the previous government spawned a “pink revolution” by promoting meat exports and cow killing with subsidies to slaughterhouses, according to the Hindu newspaper.

Cow slaughter in India began with the arrival of Muslim invaders in the early 1,000s and continued with the arrival of British rulers used to eating beef. The Sepoy Mutiny by India soldiers under British rule, one of the biggest uprisings, started in 1857 as a protest against cartridges allegedly wrapped in paper coated in a grease made of pig and cow lard.

Losing Resources

The campaign to halt all cow slaughter and limit buffalo- meat exports is for the good of the country and isn’t targeting Muslims or Christians, said Vishva Hindu Parishad’s Jain, adding that many of the main beef export businesses are owned by Hindus.

“Exporting the meat is a loss, not a gain for the country,” Jain said. “We are wasting 7,000 liters of water to get 100 kilograms of meat. As India has a drinking water shortage, a ban on cow slaughter will also save water.”

Beef has become big business for India, which sells meat at a discount to other suppliers in the region. Exports fetched $4.4 billion in 2013-2014, compared with $395 million a decade earlier, according to the state-owned Agricultural & Processed Food Products Export Development Authority. By comparison, the U.S. exported $6 billion of beef in the recent fiscal year.

Cheaper Meat

Indian beef sells for $100 to $200 less per ton than meat from its main competitor, Australia, said Ashik Hussain, a supplier of beef to exporters in Maharashtra.

Live cattle futures for April delivery fell 0.4 percent to close at $1.54 a pound on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on March 9 after climbing to a seven-week high of $1.555. Prices, which reached a record $1.7275 a pound in November, are down 5.8 percent this year.

With fewer buffaloes sent to slaughterhouses, the cost for exporters will increase, shrinking profit, said Mohammad Ali Qureshi, president of the Bombay Suburban Beef Dealers Association.

“A propaganda is being created that it is a sin to be a non-vegetarian in this country,” said Qureshi, a third- generation beef trader at the Deonar abattoir in Mumbai. “Cows are seen as godmothers in India. When did the buffalo become the godfather? There is no religious connection. The groups want to crush the beef industry mentally and financially.”

Block Trades Come to Agriculture, Sparking Transparency Concern

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 01:41:03 GMT

(Bloomberg) -- Block trading -- when two customers agree outside of open outcry or outside of the electronic trade to transact a deal -- has come to the world of Chicago agriculture trading, and not everyone’s happy about it.

CME Group Inc. data show the exchange cleared four block trades in agricultural futures Monday, the first day when registered participants were allowed to make the transactions. Block trades took place in hog futures, Black Sea wheat and urea fertilizer.

In hogs, the block trade accounted for 8.2 percent of Monday’s estimated June futures volume, raising concerns that the price discovery purpose of the exchange is less transparent, Roy Huckabay, executive vice president at Chicago-based Linn & Associates said in an email. Block trades are required to be reported within 15 minutes of completion.

Block trading “is aimed at big funds and does not fit most commercial firms,” Huckabay said. “It will not help encourage participation from the customers that matter.”

CME began offering block trading based on “customer demand,” spokesman Chris Grams said by email.

“These transaction types will enable many types of clients to execute trades when market liquidity is not readily evident, including in deferred contract months, less liquid option strikes or in spread or combination strategies,” Grams said. “By allowing block trades, these trades can now be conducted at the exchange, which will enhance transparency, as reporting is required.”

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.

Cattle Markets Rally Late Week

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:19:43 GMT

CME cattle futures followed Thursday’s limit up trading with solid gains again in action Friday. The nearby October contract closed up $2.12 at $101.15. Feeder cattle futures also post gains, with nearby October up $0.12.

The bullish ideas in Chicago helped lift cash cattle prices on the High Plains off the six-year lows established last week. Friday saw a few trades at $98 to $99.50, which is $1.50 higher than last week. USDA’s five-area average was $98.24.

Friday’s USDA cattle on feed report found 10.3 million cattle in U.S. feedlots, slightly more than the same time a year ago. September placements were 1.91 million head, down 2% from 2015. USDA says September placements were the lowest since the data series began in 1996. Marketings of fed cattle during September totaled 1.73 million head, 5 percent above 2015.

Market analysts are calling the Cattle on Feed report neutral to friendly on the lighter than expected placement numbers.

Feeder cattle traded in a wide, mixed range at $2 higher to $7 lower. USDA reported steer and heifer calves sold mostly 3.00 to 6.00 lower, with unweaned calves selling up to 10.00 lower.

CME Beef Industry Scholarship Celebrates 25 Years with 25 Scholarships

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 02:15:01 GMT

For cattlemen and women, investing in the future and ensuring the next generation has the skills and knowledge to lead the industry is of paramount importance. We’re proud to have partnered with the CME Group in this effort for what will be our 25th year through the CME Beef Industry Scholarship.

The CME Beef Industry Scholarship was introduced in 1989 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Live Cattle futures contract on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The scholarship recognizes and encourages talented students who will one day be industry leaders. This year marks the 25th year for presentation of these scholarships and the 50th anniversary of the Live Cattle futures contract.

In honor of this milestone, the CME Group is awarding 25 scholarships of $1,000 to outstanding students who are pursuing careers in the beef industry.

The overall scholarship winner, Garret Kays of Weir, Kan., was awarded an all-expense-paid trip to the 2014 Cattle Industry Annual Convention and Trade Show in Nashville, where he will be recognized during the Best of Beef Breakfast program.

“This scholarship program is an investment to the future of our industry and its future leaders,” said Scott George, NCBA president. “We are proud to have this lasting partnership with CME Group and to offer $25,000 this year for these students to advance their careers in the beef industry.”

CME Group Managing Director of Agricultural Commodities & Alternative Investments Tim Andriesen expressed the importance of risk management to the beef industry, which was the subject of the applicants’ essays this year. According to Andriesen, the beef scholarship also enables talented young people committed to the beef industry to pursue their careers.

“Over the last 25 years, this scholarship program has enabled us to invest in the next generation of our nation’s food producers,” said Andriesen. “NCBA remains a critical partner in advancing risk management education to future beef industry leaders.”

Each applicant must have demonstrated a commitment to a career in the beef industry through classes, internships or life experiences, as well as have written an essay describing a risk confronting the beef industry with their solution to managing that risk.

Source: National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoication