“If we step back and look at what that means for farmland, we're taking our energy production system from highly centralized production facilities and we have to distribute it,” says David Muth.
The march toward break even for cattle feeders stumbled last week as average losses increased $36 per head, leaving closeouts $113 in the red, according to the Sterling Beef Profit Tracker.
Beef packers saw their margins jump more than $86 per head higher last week, leaving average profits at $199, according to calculations by Sterling Marketing, Vale, Ore.
After slicing more than 50% off the monstrous losses found a month ago, cattle feeders saw their margins slip $43 per further into the red last week with $2 per cwt. lower bids.
The adjectives have all been used to describe the despair that is cattle feeding. Last week was simply worse than the week before, which was a train wreck.
Another small rally in cash fed cattle markets provided another modest improvement in feeder margins, but closeouts remain $24.66 per cwt. short of break even.
Beef packer margins jumped into the black last week while cattle feeders saw their margins improve $88 per head, according to the Sterling Beef Profit Tracker.
Beef packer profit margins continued to grow last week as the beef cutout jumped nearly $5 per cwt. and cash fed cattle prices declined another $2 per cwt.
Cattle feeding margins were unchanged from the previous week, which means the train wreck continues. Despite modest gains in the cash market, cattle feeders lost an average of $206 per head, just $1 better than the previous week.
Beef cutout prices trended about $2.80 per cwt. higher to $256.37, and packer margins improved more than $26 per head, resulting in losses of $15 on every animal processed.