“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.
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.
Beef packers put away the red ink last week as they turned modest profits on every animal processed. Feedyard margins, however, slipped a little further away from positive.