- Okay, our first speaker this morning is Dr. Brenda Boetel,
from UW River Falls,
and she's gonna be talking about the livestock outlook--
markets and that kind of thing for beef producers.
So with that, I'll put Brenda on.
- Morning. So we're gonna talk about
the livestock situation and outlook
as it presents for currently where we're at right now
and then maybe what's gonna happen for the rest of the year.
The way in which I do this, I kind of talk about things first,
of what's the demand side for it?
I'll talk a little bit about some of the input aspects of it,
and then I'll talk about the supply side
of the beef productions.
Key issues that we're seeing for 2016:
How long are these low input prices or grain prices gonna
stick around is one of the things we're gonna talk about.
Otherwise we're also gonna talk about protein demand,
what's happening in the U.S. economy,
what's happening with U.S. consumers,
what's happening with the international demand,
so exports for our meat products.
And then we'll talk about the species supplies
regarding poultry, hog, and beef supplies, okay?
So just to give you some little bit of idea
about what's happening right now in the markets,
and why some of these things are going before we talk about
where prices are gonna go.
So first off, we have-- is right now we have a large corn supply
in the United States.
So there's a total corn supply right now
of about 15.9 billion bushels.
When we think about how much we've carried over
versus how much we have, so this is a pretty significant--
this is our highest amount of supply that we have in corn.
And as you can see right here if you look at the graph,
the blue charts is basically what our corn supply is
and the red line that's going through that then basically
is the corn price.
As the supply of corn's gone up, basically,
what's happening is the typical scenario
is the price of the corn's gone down.
This is good if you're feeding corn.
You know, it costs you less to be able to feed that input,
but basically the question is,
"How long is it gonna stick around?"
So what we're looking at is then basically
what's gonna happen with corn price.
For this year, as we all know right now
with the corn price-- we're in planting season,
it's a-- Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois.
We're actually ahead for planting season for corn,
but other states like Indiana are actually behind.
So from general, where we're probably gonna be
for the nation is we're probably gonna be right on track
as far as for planting for corn for this year.
That typically means-- that's a good thing,
because on the one hand for prices,
is if we get a really late planting,
then prices tend to go up, and if it's really early,
prices tend to go down.
So we see that-- that one aspect of it.
The other thing that we're-- right now, is this is,
for corn market, if we're looking at it for this year,
it's pretty much a weather market
that we're experiencing right now.
As are going into the effects of La Niņa,
right now the question becomes is, "What's gonna happen
with the drought for-- is there gonna be a drought in 2016?"
All right?
Apart from-- I'm not a weather forecaster,
so all I'm gonna do is sit down and say, "Okay,
let's talk about what we're seeing."
You know, the reality is we'll probably have
some type of La Niņa effect.
The question becomes is to "When is that going to have an impact
on grain production?"
So will we end up having a drought?
More than likely we will.
The question is "Will it impact us this year?"
Depending on who you look at,
where you're looking at it from this case,
I believe that more than likely if we have one,
we're not gonna see a national big impact on it
for this particular year, for 2016 production.
What that means is there might be some areas
in the United States that have a greater impact,
but more than likely that's not gonna be
the 2012 levels where we saw a national drought
aspect relative, you know,
so will we see those spike in prices that we saw in 2012?
I am saying no, because I don't think that
there's gonna be that drought.
So now this is-- this is where I say,
this is really a weather market that you're looking at.
The question becomes, you know, if we start seeing that,
yes, you know, will that have an impact?
The La Niņa impact right now where we look at it
is most of them are saying it's probably gonna be hitting
more in the late August, September,
again, which is probably a little later
than what we would experience for it having an impact on corn.
All right, so when we look at this, it's probably not
gonna have too much of an impact--
at least my opinion-- this year.
Next year's a different story, if we're talking about for 2017.
But that's jumping ahead of where we're going.
So for 2016, I don't think there's gonna be
a huge impact in corn prices, based off of drought,
so what that means is if we look at the amount of corn
that's been planted, if we look at
and we have even just normal production years,
we will be seeing corn prices in that low-- high $2.00
to low $3.00 range by harvest price.
If we see that, all right?
So again, there's a lot of impacts here,
whether or not we get-- you know, whether or not we actually get
the yield that we typically-- trendline yields
that we would experience for corn.
And then also, too, the question is "Will Indiana and some of
"these other states that are lagging behind right now,
"will they be able to get back and get into
they have all of their corn planted?"
If we say that's the case,
then that's where those prices aren't gonna be there.
We won't be experiencing high corn prices in--
if that's the scenario, for probably another two years.
So unless-- 2017, unless there's some massive nationwide
drought, you know, and that's a little further out
than I would have-- but if, even if it's a regionalized drought,
you're still gonna have enough corn that we won't see
those huge price spikes until then.
All right.
When we look at beans, basically,
what are we seeing right now?
We're seeing basically an increase in bean prices
in a regional aspect again.
A lot of this has to do with South America,
and a lot of it has to do with an increased use of beans.
So we're seeing the usage of beans went up a little bit more
than what they were expecting in that case.
What we're seeing also is an expectation that
there's not gonna be as many beans planted
as what they were originally anticipating,
plus then we sit down and we look at South America,
and we see that the Brazilian production has--
they've tapered it back from
what they were expecting a little bit.
It's still very good production,
but it's tapered back from a little bit
and Argentina's having some issues.
So when we couple all of those things together,
that's where we saw that spike in prices here,
primarily right after the last USDA report,
which was in May-- last Tuesday.
So those are the big things that have been impacting
that soybean price.
Again, this is the case, where, though, what we saw
was-- we saw-- the USDA came through,
and significantly decreased, basically,
the carry over of beans from one marketing year to the next.
That had an impact-- short term impact on the markets
and it should have an impact on the markets right there.
However the question remains is that, we still have
a lot of beans in the world, all right?
So that's gonna be that short-term impact.
It doesn't mean we're gonna start seeing beans
in that $10 range again.
It just means that we're gonna have the shorter impact
as we adjust to some of the ideas that
there's a little bit more bean usage out there,
and maybe we don't have quite as much carry over,
but again, we had so much carry over for beans,
that we had so much cushion, and even still,
with this increase in this,
we still have a large cushion for beans,
so even if there is significant decline in production,
we have enough beans to be able to carry us over.
There's not gonna be a huge spike in the prices there.
All right, so that's the idea of it for inputs.
When we look at, now-- when we look at beef
and when we look at protein demand,
we kind of have to also talk about basically
what's happening with the economy, all right?
So in the United States, we look at GDP.
So we kind of want to sit down and we say "Where's it going?"
The GDP is growing, albeit it's growing a little slower
than what it has been, we are still growing,
basically, in the United States,
so the blue bars are basically where our quarterly growth
has been for the United States and as you can see,
we still are growing, we're still blue,
so that's a good thing, all right?
Unemployment rate is at 5%.
It's been stable, basically, since 2015.
It's actually up very, very slightly since February,
but when we look at it in general terms,
it's pretty stable and it's the lowest, really, we've been
in that time since 2008.
Personal income-- when we look at our per capita
disposable personal income,
2015, we saw improvements in that,
relative to 2014 of 2.4%.
All right?
Domestic consumer confidence, basically, is up again,
so people are sitting there and saying and believing
that the economy-- they think that the economy
is going well and is going to continue to grow.
All right, now, where does this all play into?
It all plays, basically, into consumers,
because meat is expensive,
and as we're looking here and talking about it,
primarily from the aspect of beef,
beef is the most expensive protein that we have.
All right, so as a consumer, if I don't believe
that I'm going to have disposable income,
or if I'm concerned about my job next year,
or next month, or I'm concerned about the economy,
and I want to start saving money,
that disposable income-- if that disposable income
starts to decrease, I'm gonna start saying
"I need to save money."
What's one of the fastest ways in which
the U.S. consumer saves money?
Is we don't go out to eat as often.
We consume a lot of food.
The average consumer in the United States
spends a lot of their money on going out to eat.
A lot of their food budget is going out to eat,
not just eating at home.
That has a bigger impact for beef
than any of the other proteins,
primarily because as we consume beef--
we consume a lot of hamburger,
but we consume a lot of hamburger at home,
and we consume a lot in the restaurants, too,
but majority-- and a big percentage
of where those high-valued
steaks and middle meats are consumed is in restaurants.
All right, if people consume-- and they drop and stop
going out to eat because of their concern about the economy,
that has a bigger impact on beef, because now suddenly,
we're going to not have those high-priced meat products
being consumed as often, all right?
That plays into this, because then,
what we'll also see is restaurants will sit down
and they will sit down and they'll say
"Okay, well, wait a minute, I'm gonna have a menu change,
"and I'm not going to have as-- I'm going to replace this
"really, really high-priced steak,
"with either a lower-valued steak
or potentially either pork or poultry," right?
So it has an impact on beef primarily.
It has an impact on everything, all proteins,
but primarily on beef because of the rates of--
the value of the consumption that is used in restaurants.
What all that plays into is what we look at with this.
This is the RPI; this is our Restaurant Performance Index.
And it's anything above 100 basically is saying
that restaurants are in that expansion phase.
So we are basically expanding in it.
Anything below 100 is saying that people aren't going out
to eat as often in restaurants; they're in a contraction phase.
We are at 100.7.
Expectations for it, we're at about 101.2.
They're down slightly.
So the expectations are that we're not quite as high
as what we were thinking as far as for restaurants.
It's not as good as what we were thinking,
but we're still in the expansion phase.
This is good, because if you look back in December,
we were below, all right?
So we were below, basically, that,
and that was a big cause for concern as far as for--
as far as for beef.
One other aspect about it is when we see menu changes.
Remember as I talked about--
we sit there and say "Okay, there's different changes."
When certain restaurants make particular changes
to their menu, to say that we're going to either have
only choice beef or things like that,
we can see that and recently we have seen that
impact in the wholesale beef prices in the United States
in the last couple of weeks due to a restaurant
that came through and said
"We're going to have only choice beef."
All right, so then how long will that last?
Probably not-- it's gonna-- it helps for a while.
It helps create a little bit of an impact there
for those couple of weeks,
and then but basically we can see that in that whole--
in that industry and in those prices.
What's all this mean is that
when we look at it as far as for--
ultimately we want to make sure we continue to have prices.
So when we look at strong demand,
when we're looking at it for meats and for that
and for beef, we look at prices.
And the evidence of that strong demand is in prices, okay?
So when we look at this across the board,
if you look at the last couple of years for beef, still,
pay attention to-- the red line is basically the beef price.
The dotted blue line, the second line from the top,
is the pork price, and then the two bottom lines
are my broilers and turkey prices.
So if you look, both pork and poultry prices went down,
in relative-- in real prices in 2015,
whereas beef price continued to go up, all right?
Now, that indicates to me that still,
even though, yes, we had less production,
but because those prices are going up,
we do still have a strong demand, all right?
Especially when you consider the differences
and look at the difference between
beef and the pork price, all right?
If you go back, even back to about 2006,
and if you went back-- certainly back to 2000--
See, look at the difference
between the pork and the beef price
relative to where we're at now.
That's an impact. That's where I say
we're a beef nation. We like beef, all right?
This is where we sit down and say, though,
"Okay, we still like beef. We can see that because
"we're willing still to have that beef price go up,
even though these other proteins are going down."
All right, so we still have a lot of strong demand.
The biggest concern, though, is if we start to see
the economy slide, or if we start to see some other impacts,
then, basically in unemployment and things like that,
it impacts beef prices the most, and that's where we'll see
that difference between those go down.
As I said this recently, when we look at our choice cutout value,
then, basically, the blue line on the bottom
is my average price from 2010 to 2014.
The red line is basically the choice cutout price
for 2015 and then the green is where we're at for 2016.
We're not as high as where we were at in 2015,
which was record high prices for beef.
However, we're still above, basically,
the average of the five years previous to that.
We still have high beef prices and that,
and as I said, typically we get the seasonality
aspect of it that goes through.
Right now as we're gearing up for Memorial Day,
so some of those retailers and restaurants were trying
to source meat for that, so we saw a little blip
in the prices there.
What we saw, if you look at the wholesale beef prices last year
at the end of 2015, if you remember what happened,
what happened with cattle prices and beef prices in that
is that we ended up with a large percentage of
really heavy cattle in 2015.
That ends up having an impact, basically,
throughout the entire system, all right?
So we saw a little bit of that--
that's where some of that decline came in there.
From the international side of our demand for it,
where are we looking at for beef trade.
When we're looking at-- these numbers are basically
where from 2016, from the first quarter of 2016,
relative to the first quarter of 2015,
our imports are down about 9 1/2%
while our exports are up about 1 1/2%.
And then you can look the specific countries
where we typically import and/or export to, all right?
So exports are up about 1 1/2%. That's a good thing.
If we think about, basically,
beef exports about 9.5 to 9.6%
of their annual production each year is what our exports
are in the United States for beef, all right?
So we're typically always in that range.
We're going to export a little bit more this year.
However, also note that our production for beef
will be up this year as well.
So even though we're exporting more on a quantity value,
our production is up so actually in relative terms,
our production as a percentage-- I mean, our exports
as a percentage of our production is going to be down
very, very slightly this year, all right?
When we look at that as far as terms of value to--
if you look at the value of this, we're down about 18%.
from those quarters.
Some of that has to do with that decline in basic--
that's a lot to do with that decline basically in prices.
So overall, the beef trade's holding up well.
That's a good thing, because if we lose that,
that's significant for us.
Where this plays into a lot is when
we look at the value of the dollar.
Value of the dollar is high right now.
What we're seeing with the value of the dollar,
when the value of the dollar is high,
this has an impact on basically
all of our imports and exports.
If the value of the dollar is high,
we tend to lose exports in the United States.
Our exports go, because basically it means
that U.S. products are now suddenly more expensive
for other countries to buy, all right?
So holding everything else the same,
then basically, the U.S. products
just had an increase in price.
All right, so that has an impact
if the value of the dollar is high.
It has an impact on corn exports.
It has an impact on soybean exports,
on beef and on pork and on poultry.
All these different products.
Yes, it's good from us if we're importing products,
because those become less expensive
but from an ag aspect, we tend to export a lot.
All right, so then that plays into that,
and that has an impact, so it's good that the value
in our beef exports are still holding up this much,
especially when we consider the strength of the dollar
that we have right now.
All right? Where are we going?
We still have strong demand, especially when we consider
all these other things.
The question we have as far as for it,
is that we have high prices relative to the other proteins.
And how long will consumers continue to be willing
to pay those additional prices?
As I said, we also have a strong dollar.
Right now the current index is at 95.32.
The 52-week high has been about 100.25,
and the low's been about 93.31.
So we're not at the low, we're not at the high.
We-- you know, we've got concerns,
because basically the Fed came through
and they came-- they implied, basically,
that they were a little more receptive to potentially
increasing interest rates in June.
More-- so they're more receptive to increasing those
then what most people were thinking.
We'll have to wait until June to see
whether or not they do that.
But right now, that's where we're sitting here and seeing
basically by simply saying that they're receptive
to the idea of that, we saw an increase
and the value of the dollar go up.
All right, and so if you remember last week,
we saw an increase and the value of the dollar go up,
what happened, you guys?
Did you pay attention to corn prices?
What'd they do, the day that they announced that?
Corn prices went down, and that has a lot to do
with basically that trade prices, all right?
So that's one thing we definitely want to
make sure we're paying attention to.
And then we also have to be looking at basically
also policy aspects of what's gonna happen
with some of those trades.
When we look at them, basically, supply-side.
so we gotta talk about a couple different things
regarding supply-side, basically,
because not only are we looking at--
As a consumer, remember, as I go to the grocery store--
So, you know, I'm a mom; I got three kids,
and I sit down, and I go to the grocery store
and I'm gonna sit down and decide I need some proteins.
Right? So, yes, I like my hamburger,
but there's times when, you know,
if the price gets too high, do I sit down
and do I make substitutions and do some other products?
So I sit down and say "Okay, well, we have to be able to
"look and see what's happening with poultry supplies,
because that affects poultry prices,"
and then hog supply and then beef supply.
So what's happening in these other industries?
Poultry production, basically, when we look at it,
in '15 we saw an increase.
We'll see an increase basically again in '16.
We're seeing expansion for 2016
when we compare both broilers and turkeys there.
Exports, we're down, basically, in 2015.
A lot of that had to do with avian influenza.
We have not yet regained.
They're up a little bit for 2016
they're still not back to where they were at
prior to that impact.
So the exports are not-- when we look at our annual--
again, exports is a percentage of our production.
They're not at the level that they were.
What that means is, when we're not exporting it,
where does that go?
If we have more production and we're not exporting it,
it's here domestically and we put those on the shelves here,
which drives those prices down.
All right, so when we look at this,
we can look at this and we can go and say
"We have a domestic supply, basically,
of increase of about 6%."
All right, so in that case, and so that means that we have more,
basically, poultry to be able to consume in the United States.
When we look at some of these others,
we'll see very slight expansion in 2016,
stable to very slight expansion there,
but again, if we have that slight expansion,
and we don't have that increase,
that means again, there's still more poultry.
When we look at the pork production,
In 2015, relative to 2014--
I realize some of this is a little--
but we saw 7% increase in production in 2015 over 2014.
We will see, basically, again, an increase in production
in 2016; we are seeing that.
It won't be at that 7%.
We're probably about that 3% to 4% increase
in that production.
Now, in '15 we saw pork exports that were down 4.5%
in 2015, relative to 2014.
Again, we've seen a little bit of a boost
in the pork exports, but again, where does that play into
is that we've seen that increase in production.
Pork is much more dependent on exports than beef is.
So remember I said we produce-- we export about 9--
a little over 9% of our production of beef?
We export over 20% of our production of pork.
So when we have impacts and the dollar gets stronger,
or impacts of other economies, that has a bigger impact
in pork than it does in the others.
Than the other products.
So when we look at this, where we're at is, again,
pork production, where exports are strong
but we're not producing-- they're slightly down
as a percentage of our actual production
because the production has gone up at a faster rate
than what the exports have, all right?
So what's all this mean is that, again,
we have a lot of poultry and we have a lot of pork
in the United States right now,
and that's gonna be on the retail stores;
it's gonna be in restaurants,
and those are the things that they feature,
again because prices are lower, especially--
So this is really concerning,
'cause especially if we see a downturn in the economy,
then they're really gonna be featured.
Right now we can feature beef,
because people are willing to pay for it,
because they feel secure.
All right?
Cattle numbers-- basically, when we look at
the inventory of cattle in the United States,
the cattle numbers are low across the board,
but they are growing.
Again, these are January numbers.
We have a USDA report that comes out twice a year--
once in January, once in July-- that basically comes through,
and in 2016 we saw that basically the actual number
of total cattle inventory in the United States
was up about 3.2%, relative to what it was in 2015.
Cow inventory, if we look at that,
it's up about 3.5% for beef cows,
and it's up about 0.1% for dairy cows, all right?
So that's kind of where we're sitting as far as for
the cow inventory, and then we look at the calf crop for--
it's up about 2.3%.
So all this tells me that, yes, we are growing.
You know, barring any weather catastrophes,
barring anything like that.
As long as we have more cows and we have a greater calf crop,
we're gonna eventually grow this herd, all right?
So until we start doing some of this--
So right now that's a good thing.
What that means then is, when we look at feeder cattle supplies,
outside of feedlots.
So these are the ones that are still outside the feedlots.
Basically 2016 is seeing an increase
of about 5% of feeder cattle supplies,
relative to what we had the previous-- in 2015.
All right? Heifers held then as beef cow replacements--
so again what's the expectation if we're gonna keep them back?
That's about 3.3% relative to what we were,
so all of this is again telling me and indicating
that we are gonna sit down and say
that we're growing this cattle inventory.
The highest cattle prices typically occur
during the accumulation phase, basically,
of the inventory cycle, right?
That's when we have the lowest amount of animals;
that's when we typically see the highest prices.
Accumulation began late '14.
For sure we have the data that says it began in 2015.
So what that means, as we build the herd,
what happens to the cattle prices?
They tend to go down.
Everything is cyclical, all right?
So remember, it's a pendulum.
Agriculture tends to be a pendulum.
As grain prices go down, cattle prices are high.
You know, one, you don't tend to see profitability
in both grain and livestock at the same times.
We have, in certain years in recent past,
but that's not the typical historical aspect of it.
All right, so what we see is,
as we are starting to accumulate these cattle,
the prices are gonna go down, all right?
Doesn't mean that you can't be profitable;
it's just that if we look back
at the returns on investment that we saw in 2014 and 2015,
and if you are waiting and expecting to get
return on investment of that level,
it is not going to happen.
You know, it's one of those things of kind of like
where you sit down and say, "Hey, that was a great run.
"And it was a great time, but I probably won't see that level
"of return on my investment again,
at least not for a very long period of time," all right?
So-- but it doesn't mean you can't be profitable.
When we look at April cattle and feed--
Yesterday, actually, the May cattle and feed did come out,
but it came-- it comes out in the afternoon,
and I'd already put my presentation together,
so what we have-- I want to talk about April,
and then I'll just tell you the numbers again for May.
But basically what we had was
the USDA Cattle and Feed Report for April.
When we look at it-- where we're looking at for cattle and feed,
these are the reports that come and tell us
how many cattle that we have currently placed on feed
in feedlots that have 1,000 head or more.
How many cattle did we end up placing on feed
in the previous months,
and then how many did we market?
So what we're seeing is on feed, we saw--
In April, we saw they were up 1%.
In May, they're up as well.
Placed on feed, we saw them up in March.
They were up about 5%.
And in April, if we look at that one,
it was up, I believe it was about 7% yesterday,
is what they came through.
And then the fed cattle marketed in March
was up about 7%, and it was up just slightly again in--
if we looked at the report from yesterday-- in April.
So what does all this mean?
It's basically telling me, again,
why do we have more cattle on feed?
Well, again, we're having more cattle on feed
because the numbers are growing, all right?
So that's telling me that we're placing more cattle on feed
because we have some more of them there.
But also, too, when we sit down and we look at how long
are these animals being kept on feed,
we are starting to see, finally, some of that decline in weight.
So remember, go back to 2015,
the end of 2015, remember, I was talking about that?
We saw very, very heavy animals.
We saw steers that weighed-- in some places, not everywhere--
but they were super heavy and we saw steers
that weighed almost as much as some bulls, all right?
That's unheard of in certain locations.
You know, so what we saw was this--
these were very heavy animals that we were.
It was way too-- way too heavy,
and we saw an impact in the prices.
If you remember between October and December,
what happened to those fed animal prices
is they went downhill very steeply.
What we're seeing is we're getting back
to being a lot more current, all right?
So the weights have actually decreased.
They continue to decrease again this year.
I mean, this month, and so we're back to, basically,
where we're at-- we're more current on that,
which is a good thing as far as for those animals, all right?
So what we're seeing is, we're seeing this increase.
It was a little bit surprising that we saw
the big increase in the placements.
I don't think there was an expectation by the industry
that the placements would be as high as what they were
but, still, we're seeing these placed animals
and we're staying current on that.
That's a good thing as far as for cattle prices.
Cattle prices, where are we going, then?
It's gotta be looked at as very different,
and you remember this is always--
there's always room for potential changes.
Things happen, all sorts of stuff,
so if you have a port disruption,
or if we end up with a drought--
everything that can happen, all right?
But where we're looking at,
as long as the feeding industry remains current,
and I put-- excuse me, that says-- I didn't update that.
It says "carcass weights continue to increase."
We're actually decreasing slightly now.
Where we're looking at is our commercial slaughter in 2016,
is gonna be up about 3.5%,
so we will slaughter about 3.5% more animals in 2016
than what we did in 2015.
And because of-- even though they've gone down a little bit,
but because of those weights,
our beef production's gonna be up about 4.2% in 2016.
So we will have more beef in 2016.
Where are they gonna go, then?
Again, beef trade is staying strong.
Beef demand-- domestic beef demand is staying strong,
but, overall, even though those aren't growing,
and the production is growing, we will see
year-over-year declines in prices.
So when we look at this, where do we see
for first quarter prices?
So this is, again, 2016 prices compared to 2015 prices.
We saw first quarter prices that were down about 17%
relative to where they were at in 2015.
If we look going forward, then,
for 20-- for the second quarter, we'll see about--
declines in prices of about 18.7%.
For the third quarter, they're gonna be about 13.3% lower.
Fourth quarter's down about 2.5%.
Not as low in the fourth--
Not as much lower of a decline in the fourth quarter,
because we saw the dramatic decline last year,
and so that's being accounted for,
but it will still be lower.
Where are feeder cattle prices going, then?
They're still strong in spite of losses
that the feed yards have been experiencing.
Feed yards have not been experiencing the losses
that they were experiencing in 2015.
But they're still there.
When we look at these-- so these are not Wisconsin prices.
These are based off of southern plains prices, okay?
So you're gonna have to do an adjustment on these.
The live cattle prices offer five market prices.
But basically when we look at yearling, 700 to 800 pounders,
you can see first quarter, about 26% lower,
second quarter about 34% lower,
third quarter about 30% lower,
and fourth quarter about 14%.
If we look at the 500 to 600 pounds,
first quarter is again 29%,
second quarter 34%, third quarter 24%,
and fourth quarter 8%.
So lower prices, but if you go back,
they're lower prices than what they were in 2015.
2015 was our historical high.
That was the highest prices they had ever been, all right?
So, yes, they are lower.
Where will they go? If we look at them,
expected to be in about the 190 range
by October, November this year.
If we're looking at calf prices,
we're gonna typically see that typical seasonal pattern,
again, barring any weather thing,
but right now we should expect that.
The biggest thing we want to do is if there is some weather,
drought or something like that,
we need to watch those corn prices,
because if corn prices start to dramatically increase,
then calf prices fall.
Those two tend to be related to each other
because, again, they're both inputs into the cattle feeder.
All right?
So barring any drought, we should stay pretty high.
Where are we looking at as far as for returns?
So this is where I say there's still potential
for profitability in cattle.
When we look at this-- these are average annual returns.
So this is not your typical--
This is not your neighbor's feed yard or your feed yard,
this is the average, all right?
So when we look at corn prices on a national average
and cattle prices on a national average,
but it gives us a benchmark.
As I said, if you look at 2015 on a per-head basis,
we were sitting down and were experiencing
big losses, you know, on an average in the United States,
of over $300 a head. That's a lot.
Why is that? Because that was high corn--
they were still experiencing higher corn prices.
And that's when they were-- feeders were paying
very high prices for feeder cattle.
Losses, not so-- not so great now.
And in fact, actual-- there's a potential--
We see-- if you look at this across the board,
it's always red.
So the closer it gets-- that's why I say,
because, again, some of this is because of lagging,
and it makes assumptions on how you're feeding,
and everybody does it different, all right?
But, you know, so when you see the blip in the black,
that means it's pretty good.
That's a pretty good year, all right?
So as we get to closer, you know, we're not--
we're still seeing losses here, but--
I can't get over there-- we're still seeing losses in 2016,
but it's pretty close to that zero?
That means that there's actually quite a bit
of potential, then, basically, for profitability,
depending on your management and how you feed.
All right, when we look at opportunities--
if you're cow calf producers, where are we sitting here?
Again, if you go back 2014,
that's basically when we were sitting here,
and, you know, we-- you were making--
you had really good returns on investment,
on-- at that point.
Are we as high now? No.
If we look at it from an average,
we're about $150, $153 per head again.
So is that pretty good?
That's still in pretty good terms.
It's still there, but it's not at the levels
that we were seeing.
And a lot of that has to do, again,
because of the decline, basically,
in those feeder cattle prices, all right?
So profitability potential's still there,
for where we're looking at it as far as for cattle.
Things we need to be concerned about:
exports, strong dollar.
If we do see huge spikes in the rates in June,
basically that will be a little bit concerning,
because that's gonna keep the dollar strong,
which might have an impact on our exports.
In that case, then, demand's gonna weaken.
And more than-- we'll see, but it should stay pretty strong.
Overall, we have positive views in the United States
on protein and animals fats, as to compared to
where we were at about five years ago.
You know, carbs aren't great, proteins are good, you know?
So that's good as far as for meat production
and as far as for meat prices,
so we want to keep that going on.
Beef prices, they'll stay high.
They're not gonna be at those 2015 levels.
And then any abundance, again, the value of it,
even if it doesn't impact the beef trades so much,
if the value of the dollar goes up
and it has an impact on pork,
then that's gonna mean more pork here,
and we'll see those retailers featuring pork,
which will eventually.
So there's that domino effect.
So the things we need to be concerned about
are primarily at this point, in my opinion,
is the value of the dollar and how that impacts our exports.
All right, if you guys have any questions,
I can take a few minutes now.
[applause]
Yes. - What's been going on--