Beef Market Update: Volatility (and confusion) across the markets

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A question for many when they hear about inflation and rising prices is: how does this impact food, beef, and and what are the potential effects on demand?

The extreme volatility doesn’t help anything either, says Anne Wasko, of the Gateway Livestock Exchange, in this week’s Beef Market Update.

“One day it’s going to be led with inflation and possible recession news, and then the next day we’ve got really good weather through the corn belt, and grain prices are down and cattle prices are up. And then the next day we wake up, and we’ve got more on the economic side, more demand worries, basically across all commodities.

“I would describe at as a daily environment of watching the volatility of the markets as we move through this timeframe. You can wake up on a Monday morning, and it’ll be a different story by Friday’s close.”

And it becomes difficult to know if the rapidly changing prices have impacted demand.

Wasko says we can watch week to week, which is why we talk about cutout prices, wholesale prices, and so on.

“Those prices are still trending very seasonally, as we would expect. Right now here in June, we watch the slaughter rates. And of course in both the U.S. and Canada we’ve got big harvest levels in 2022. We’ve had lots of cattle to get through, and the packers are getting through them.”

Check out the full conversation between Wasko and RealAg Radio host Shaun Haney, below:

 

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