Light-to-moderate feedlot sales surfaced at midweek with packer bids swinging along with volatile live and feeder futures. Accordingly, live sales ranged from $116 to $118 (i.e., $1 lower to $1 higher) with the best business done late after the board closed near session highs. Understandably, feedlot managers Thursday should be more resolute with higher asking prices (i.e., $120 in the South and $190 in the North). Opening bids are likely to be around $118 in the South and $186 to $187 in the North. Cattle contracts should open Thursday at least moderately higher, supported by follow-through buying and short-covering.
Hog buyers seem set to resume work Thursday with steady/weak bids. With the spread between the pork cutout and the latest cash index nearly $9.50, packer margins remain decent. This fact should boost chain speed through the end of the week as much as ready numbers allow. Lean futures are likely to open moderately higher with the help of residual buying and cash premiums.
| BULL SIDE | BEAR SIDE | ||
| 1) | In a surprising display of buying interest on Wednesday, short-bought packers purchased light-to-moderate numbers, paying $118 on a live basis. Conventional wisdom calls for packers to have more leverage through August, not less. | 1) | Beef cutouts closed moderately lower on Wednesday with demand described as no better than "light to moderate." |
| 2) | At the conclusion of a very choppy session, live and feeder futures closed sharply higher Wednesday with nearly all feeder issues closing above 10-day moving highs. | 2) | For the week ending July 29, U.S. hatcheries in the United States set 226 million broilers eggs in incubators, up 5% from a year ago. At the same time, chicks placed totaled 184 million chicks, up 2% from 2016. |
| 3) | Lean hog contracts staged an impressive rally at midweek, flying higher in the face of defensive fundamentals. Perhaps specs and commercials are beginning to wonder if deferred issues are not exaggerated. | 3) | For the week ending July 29, Iowa barrows and gilts averaged 275.9 pounds, .2 lbs more than the previous week (despite the summer heat) and .3 lbs lighter than 2016. |
| 4) | Despite large receipts at midweek (i.e., 14,717 head negotiated on a national basis), hog buyers felt obliged to hold country bids essentially steady. | 4) | The pork carcass value plunged sharply lower at midweek, losing close to $2 thanks to softer demand for fresh cuts, picnics and bellies. |
CATTLE: (Kyodo) -- Japan will discuss the imposition of emergency tariffs on frozen beef imports with the United States under a bilateral economic dialogue, Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said Tuesday.
His remarks came after Japan raised tariffs on frozen beef from the United States and other countries from the current 38.5 percent to 50 percent until next March, after their imports surged.
Under World Trade Organization rules, Japan can introduce safeguard tariffs when imports grow more than 17 percent in a quarter on a year-on-year basis.
Aso said there is "room for consideration" as to whether the time span should be reviewed. He added that the safeguard would not have been triggered if the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement had taken effect.
"I expect this is the kind of issue that will likely be discussed during the economic dialogue (with the United States)," Aso, who doubles as finance minister, told reporters after a Cabinet meeting.
Japan was planning to abolish the safeguard mechanism with the taking effect of the Pacific free trade deal from which the United States withdrew in line with the launch of President Donald Trump's administration.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue has warned that the imposition of higher tariffs "would harm our important bilateral trade relationship with Japan."
HOGS: (The Guardian) -- The global meat industry, already implicated in driving global warming and deforestation, has now been blamed for fueling what is expected to be the worst "dead zone" on record in the Gulf of Mexico.
Toxins from manure and fertiliser pouring into waterways are exacerbating huge, harmful algal blooms that create oxygen-deprived stretches of the gulf, the Great Lakes and Chesapeake Bay, according to a new report by Mighty, an environmental group chaired by former congressman Henry Waxman.
It is expected that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) will this week announce the largest ever recorded dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is expected to be larger than the nearly 8,200 square-mile area that was forecast for July -- an expanse of water roughly the size of New Jersey.
Nutrients flowing into streams, rivers and the ocean from agriculture and wastewater stimulate an overgrowth of algae, which then decomposes. This results in hypoxia, or lack of oxygen, in the water, causing marine life either to flee or to die.
Some creatures, such as shrimp, suffer stunted growth. Algal blooms themselves can cause problems, as in Florida last summer when several beaches were closed after they became coated in foul-smelling green slime.
America's vast appetite for meat is driving much of this harmful pollution, according to Mighty, which blamed a small number of businesses for practices that are "contaminating our water and destroying our landscape" in the heart of the country.
"This problem is worsening and worsening and regulation isn't reducing the scope of this pollution," said Lucia von Reusner, campaign director at Mighty. "These companies' practices need to be far more sustainable. And a reduction in meat consumption is absolutely necessary to reduce the environmental burden."
The Mighty report analyzed supply chains of agribusiness and pollution trends and found that a "highly industrialized and centralized factory farm system" was resulting in vast tracts of native grassland in the midwest being converted into soy and corn to feed livestock. Stripped soils can wash away in the rain, bringing fertilisers into waterways.
Arkansas-based Tyson Foods is identified by the report as a "dominant" influence in the pollution, due to its market strength in chicken, beef and pork. Tyson, which supplies the likes of McDonald's and Walmart, slaughters 35m chickens and 125,000 head of cattle every week, requiring five million acres of corn a year for feed, according to the report.
This consumption resulted in Tyson generating 55m tons of manure last year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with 104m tons of pollutants dumped into waterways over the past decade. The Mighty research found that the highest levels of nitrate contamination correlate with clusters of facilities operated by Tyson and Smithfield, another meat supplier.
No comments:
Post a Comment