Fat Tuesday with Mike Sands | Beef Imports, Carcass Weights, and Drought

We dig into why record beef imports can rise at the same time U.S. beef prices stay near record highs, and we lay out the supply math behind the headlines. We also track carcass weights, fund liquidation, and why deferred feeder and fed cattle futures look overly discounted versus what we see in the fundamentals.
• Record U.S. beef imports offsetting a steep drop in non-fed beef production
• Domestic 90% lean trimmings holding record highs despite cheaper imported lean
• Carcass weights breaking from normal seasonality and what might be driving it
• Packer incentives and heavyweight discounts shaping weight decisions
• Speculative money exiting cattle and feeders and what that does to deferred futures
• Feeder cattle weakness tied to Mexico border reopening fears and port constraints
• Why next spring feeder futures and next summer fed futures look too discounted
• WASDE report risk, feed costs, and drought-driven pressure on grass and water
If you got a kill sheet back within the past four months and saw a discount for a heavyweight one, let us know.

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Transcript

Welcome And Market Setup

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Welcome back to Ag Bull Media. Jed Sidwell here with your Fat Tuesday show once again on time this week. I'd like to bring up we have had kind of a slow start to the week here in the livestock space, but it almost feels like all of the ag markets are just kind of tense waiting for this report that's going to come out tomorrow. And then not to mention, it seems like all of the action happens at the end of the week on the cattle side of things. We'll get to that here in a bit. I'd like to introduce Mr. Mike Sands to lead us through our slides yet again this week. How are you doing today, Mike?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Doing great, Jay and Jed. Good to be with you once again. Looking forward to our discussion.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

Yeah. We've yeah, keep on getting some positive feedback. I judged a county fair in Clayton County in northeast Iowa this weekend. And I had a few people come up to me that said, hey, I'd listened to your show the few times that it was free to the public. And I was like, that's great to hear. I'd a part of the country I had never been to before. So yeah, cool to m make some friends in a place full of strangers.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Absolutely. And it's always good to get a little bit of feedback, both both positive and negative for that matter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, we seem to attract some on our TikTok every week when we put up a TikTok, we seem to get the brightest minds like to come and leave their opinions. But uh, well, let's go ahead and glance over our topics for today. I think we have a really interesting discussion when it comes to exports and imports, which are certainly the trend to talk about right now. Record U.S. beef imports offset the decline in non-fed

Record Imports Versus Tight Supply

SPEAKER_02 2:07

beef production. Despite large lean beef imports, U.S. beef prices hover at record highs. Carcass weights are moderate. Speculative money is exiting cattle and feeder cattle. Steep deferred feeder discounts, and the same thing on the Fed cattle side, steep discounts on deferred fed cattle. Let's tear into this first one here, Mike. Record high beef prices with a draw in product to the U.S. It's I've had several people ask me about it about it, probably the past 10 days or so. Total beef imports keep going up.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

Yeah, USDA gave us the June import data in the middle part of last week, and exports too, of course, but imports were up something like 24% compared with a year ago. It's the biggest June ever that we've had. Um and obviously when you start talking about records, it does catch people's attention. And this weekly data runs through July, and uh obviously those large imports continued beyond mid-year. I think January through June was up like something like 12%. Uh, and for the most part, we'd certainly expect to see year-over-year increases basically persist through the end of the year. But uh the other side of the story, of course, is that these larger imports, for all practical purposes, are merely replacing the decline in non-fed beef production. When you look at that non-fed slaughter, obviously lean beef production, cows and bulls for all practical purposes, it's down pretty close to 35% compared with the record 2022 production. So these larger imports are kind of a mirror image of that decline in non-fed beef production. And when you put the entire picture together, total domestic U.S. beef supplies are about unchanged. So despite these big imports, if they are really not adding a great deal to domestic beef availability.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

Yeah, I I've been thinking about it a lot recently because obviously our non-fed beef number kind of means dairy cows, some coal cows here and there, random, you know, realizers and stuff like that that get sent off early. And I've the longer I've been thinking about it, maybe it's a slight indicator that we might see a slight retention rates in on the cattle side of things that we're keeping back some older cows that maybe could have we can run for an extra year or two here to try and you know take advantage of this market. And maybe that's why we've seen you know the demand for those lean kind of grind cuts go up. Maybe it's just because, yeah, like the rest of the cattle space, where there's just not a lot of out a lot of them out there right now. But it's something, yeah, if we give these other countries an inch, they're probably gonna take a mile with regards to how much they can send here because I mean we still need you know, run-of-the-mill everyday beef to make, you know, fast food burgers and canned products and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:38

Sure. About 50% or better of U.S. beef consumption is uh either ground or processed product. So uh it's a really important part of our total beef disappearance picture. And the point that you raise is really um pretty critical going forward. We think if Mother Nature cooperates, that we are going to rebuild the cow herd at some point in time. It doesn't look like it's on the verge of happening, at least not in any big way anytime soon, but there will be a time when we have a bigger cowherd out there and ultimately more kul cows to add to that beef production. And the question then is will that imported product be as large as it is now or even larger at the same time that we're increasing our domestic production? So that's an issue to be faced on down the road, but at least here in the very short run, it doesn't look to me like these big imports have really had much of a negative impact on domestic prices. If you look at that top line in this chart, Jed, that's domestic lean beef prices, 90% lean trimmings. We started out the year pretty close to $4 a pound, and over the last couple of months, we've been sitting right around $460, a record high price. And at this at the same time, we've been looking at much bigger imports, that domestic lean beef price has held very well at those historically high price levels. Now, the blue line that you see running across there since the beginning of the year is imported 90s or imported lean beef, and that market is currently down around 355. So it's a sizable discount to domestic lean beef. And to the extent that we are incorporating more of that cheaper imported product into various lean points of ground beef, it does keep a little bit of a lid on ground beef values, and I think that's critical in terms of the uh impact on the overall U.S. industry. Just as kind of a sidelight, Kevin Hassett, the head of Council of Economic Advisors, in one of the Sunday morning programs this last weekend, mentioned two or three times about his shock, if you will, with regard to record high U.S. beef prices. And uh just as an aside and a cynical response, in from my perspective at least, it's pretty obvious that beef prices aren't high enough yet, or we'd be expanding the U.S. herd. And it doesn't look to me like that's occurring yet.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah, and yeah, if he's saying it right now, where's he been for the past several months? Look at that chart though, there. I mean, we've kind of we've been here for a little bit. I mean, we're chopping around at that price. We'll see what the future holds. I liked this chart quite a bit. We talked about it some last week, and I've talked about it just briefly on some of my morning shows as well. We're starting to see a pretty consistent decline

Carcass Weights Slide Off Pattern

SPEAKER_02 9:17

in weights here in recent weeks, and we're still above a year ago, and they're still pretty high weights, but it is kind of a trend we're seeing.

SPEAKER_00 9:25

It's pretty sizable divergence from the norm, if you will. It's not at all unusual for carcass weights to bottom out like in May or June and then trend higher to seasonal highs in either November or early December. And this year, we did see a low in very late June and a rebound in early July that looked like kind of a seasonal bottom. And typically, following that, you'd expect to see some further increases going forward. In contrast, and maybe to some extent, reflecting a couple of things. Number one, weather, the heat above normal temperatures, and and some relatively high humidities in a number of cattle feeding areas may be disrupting feedlot performance. And as a result, carcass weights are not going up. In addition to that, we might be looking at some of the impacts of maybe a little bit more of a packer interest in not pushing carcass weights dramatically higher going into the fall. There was some talk about that earlier in the spring, so maybe it's a combination of the two. But the point here is that based on this series, which is usually a pretty good leading indicator of the weekly FI weights, this series set a new low, a seasonal low the first week in August. And that's really much later than normal, and it's below the previous week. And if you look at year over year changes at this point, we're less than 20 pounds heavier than a year ago. And if you go back to April and May, we were way over 40 pounds heavier than a year ago. So that's a pretty dramatic change. And maybe to some extent, we know that we have a relatively large front-end supply of cattle on feed based on the data that we've seen in recent months. And perhaps with these declining carcass weights, does take a little bit of the pressure off the cattle feeder to move cattle.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Yeah, it does. And we talk about, you know, this could be just an impact of some shrink with these. I mean, we've talked 105 degrees in a lot of the cattle country and feed yard states, and certainly not great to see. But if it were seasonal, it would follow seasons from previous years, Mike. Like 20 uh 2022, 2023, those were hot years in feeder feeding cattle states. I mean, I remember seeing some of the videos that accidentally made it to mainstream videos of, you know, loaded ones, black-headed ones in southern feed yards. You I mean, you'd think that would have an effect on this kind of seasonal carcass weights if it did. And it doesn't if you look at past years, which this year is kind of an outlier heat-wise. I mean, what they call it, I'm trying to remember the name, a flash drought is what Tom Leffler called it last week, which we're having out there in some areas. So that could be it. But it's really interesting to kind of study this. It's a weird time of year.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

It is. And to the I I think part of what you're saying is that it gets hot every July and August in cattle feeding country. And it's hard to quarrel with that. It does. This year might be a little bit of an outlier, but I don't I don't know that I would attribute all of that weight change simply to weather patterns over the last two to three weeks. I think part of it does go back to some of the decisions that Packers were making with regard to discounts on heavier weight carcasses that they announced back last spring that they were going to be inching those discounts up a little bit. That was kind of a shot across the bow that uh you get carcass weights up above a thousand and fifty pounds or or somewhere in that area, that's a little heavier than they wanted to deal with. So it may be a combination of the two, and I suspect that latter item may be more important than uh than the weather per se. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

Well, let's give uh a shout out to the listener. If you got a kill sheet back within the past four months and saw a discount for a heavyweight one, let us know. We'd love to hear it. Um, it's not public information all the time. So if you saw someplace or heard of some place where they're kind of starting to dock some hook benders, we'll put it out to the public. How's that sound, Mike? Sounds good. We'll get some we'll get some immediate feedback in that regard. Yeah, and we'll probably do a more accurate job than the USDA at collecting data from the people. This one has kind of been the story recently is that you know the funds are just pulling out of the cattle market with speculative interest and feeder cattle kind of eroded, fed cattle eroding.

SPEAKER_00 14:43

Absolutely.

Funds Exit Cattle And Feeders

SPEAKER_00 14:44

And it's been going on for a while, uh, but it seems almost week by week total open interest in cattle is coming down, and a good bit of that is related to the large spec liquidation of their long positions in cattle. Um, you'll notice that red line running across there. That speculative interest tends to increase when the cattle market is moving higher, it tends to decrease when the cattle market is moving lower, and we're obviously in the latter kind of um market change at this juncture. Back last spring, that large spec loan got up to around 120,000 contracts at about the same time that the cattle market peaked out, and as Fed cattle prices began to erode, uh the speculative interest move is in the process of moving out of cattle, and we're now down less than 40,000 contracts. So on a net basis, that's a change of over 80,000 contracts. That's a big change, but at 40,000, it's still a relatively large net long. Uh, and it's at least at this point, there does not seem to be a fundamental story to build a case for the speculative money flow to come back into either cattle or feeder cattle. I think that's one of the things that's keeping the pressure on deferred Fed cattle futures along with deferred feeder cattle futures. And that's kind of where I want to end up our discussion today is to look at those discounts. This is a chart of Oklahoma City seven to eight weight feeders along with the feeder index. That solid green line that you see running across there is

Feeder Discounts And Border Reopening

SPEAKER_00 16:40

the feeder index on a weekly basis. And you can see that current price levels at around $355, give or take a little bit, is not too far different from where we were last year at this time. Uh and again, going back to last year, it's not at all unusual to see some late summer, mid to late summer strength in the feeder market that ultimately pushed us up to around 370. In contrast, you can see a pretty sizable drop in the feeder index back at the end of July. That occurred at the same time that the announcement was made to reopen the border. And that, in my estimation, has been one of the key elements behind the weakness in the feeder market, both in terms of the discounts on futures. It seems as though to me that folks in the speculative community have basically assumed a worst case scenario that, okay, the border's going to reopen and we're going back to business as usual, and that's something over a million head of feeder cattle to be imported. In my estimation, Jed, that way overestimates the numbers of cattle that are likely to be imported from Mexico. We don't believe that the Mexican cow herd is as big as it was a couple of years ago, that there has been some liquidation. Certainly they have made investments in their feeding industry. So the intent will be to keep a few more of those cattle in Mexico. And in addition to that, at least initially, there's only one port of entry that will be open, and that's in Douglas, Arizona. And at least at this point, my best guess would be that somewhere in the area of 2,500, maybe 3,000 a week, at least initially. And it remains to be seen whether, in fact, the Santa Teresa, New Mexico, along with Columbus, New Mexico, does get reopened at some point in the fall period, assuming that everything in Douglas goes okay. I think that's a big assumption. But my point here is twofold. Number one, I think the numbers of cattle coming in are going to be significantly smaller than business as usual. And the other point is USDA's estimate of this year's calf crop was down about a half a million head compared with a year earlier. The number of imports that we're likely to get over the next several months probably won't offset that decline in US in the US calf crop. So total feeder cattle supplies over the next, say, six to nine months, for the most part, may not be dramatically different than a year earlier. And then I look out to where feeder cattle futures are for next spring at around that 320 area, give or take a little bit. That's pretty close to $50 below where this year's price was. That's a huge decline. If in fact overall supplies aren't going to be that much smaller.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Yeah. Well, I'd like to yeah, tell the listener if you need to, if you have poor eyes and need cheaters like my father, give him a slight.

SPEAKER_00 20:27

Careful now.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

Careful. Yeah. If you need to take a screenshot and zoom in on this and pause the video for a second if you're watching on your phone, because there's a lot of good stuff there, and we'll get to the fat cattle one here in a second. But I I couldn't agree with you more, Mike, on I mean, just for one, we're gonna bottleneck them at the open. I mean, that is one port that can only push so many cattle through a day, and I'm sure they're gonna be pretty well staffed to try and deal with it, but at the same time, it is just one. And the other thing is when COVID happened and we finally said, all right, we can take our masks off, COVID's over. We didn't just start immediately going back to brick and mortar clothing stores. Everyone kept buying their shoes and underwear on Amazon. Like at some point, it's just kind of how we do business now, and it's unfortunate, but markets change.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

I don't disagree with that. And and you look back at those feeder cattle imports over the last couple of years, say 23 and 24, we brought in something like a million two. I think there's some risk that we may not get back anywhere close to those kinds of levels in the foreseeable future. To your point, that the world has changed over the last two years, and chances are pretty good we're not going back to business as usual. Now, the some of the same types of things that we talked about in the feeder cattle look like they're also very much in play as far as the Fed cattle market is concerned. And I think basically, from

Fed Cattle Futures Priced Too Low

SPEAKER_00 22:03

my standpoint, the conclusions are the same that the discounts on the deferred futures, maybe not so much. This fall, although I think um price levels down in the 220 area or 225 area uh look overly discounted to me when we have a current cash market at 235, uh a $15 break from here in mid-summer after we've already broken by 20 bucks. Another $15 down in my estimation is much too steep relative to what I see with regard to both supply and demand fundamentals. But the other part of the issue is that next June, Fed Cattle Futures sitting down there at 215 or 220 is pretty close to a $40 discount from the cash highs that we saw this year. And again, while there is the potential for a modest increase in overall Fed beef production as we go into uh the winter and early spring months of next year, not nearly large enough, in my estimation, to merit that kind of a discount.

SPEAKER_02 23:22

Yeah. It really is interesting to look year over year on some of these and just how much we've moved. Tom went Leftler, when we do our show, that's always how we started, is we compare futures versus a week ago compared to a year ago. And looking at some of these just prices year over year, sure there's some changes in the overall aspect, but we're still thinking higher. And I want to get to a comment that you said earlier that drop in feeder cattle prices, if it does happen, that's fifty dollars. If that percent change happened in the Nasdaq, can you imagine? I mean, it'd be going crazy.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Uh that would be a decidedly bear market, there's no question about that.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

No, I mean, I was not not to date myself a little bit in the wrong way, but uh, I was six years old when the financial crisis of 2008 happened. I'm kind of glad that one's in my kind of the back of my mind, and then I don't really remember it too well. And I don't know if I want to go through another one of those.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

Well, you and me both. I certainly don't want to, I've got much less time to recover from something like that than you do.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Well, we're just gonna cross our fingers on that one. I thought this was uh a heck of a set of slides this week, Mike, and we'll talk to Tommy. Maybe we'll make this one public because this one was pretty good, and it'll be interesting to see, you know, our our term that we seem to have just coined here at Agpole, and it's kind of just a trading term in general, but uh a rising tide or a falling tide changes all ships. We got this WASDI report coming out tomorrow. I'm not sure what to think about it. I've heard some pretty wild estimates of what will happen. I'm sure there'll be some of the volatility escape

WASDE Risk And Feed Cost Shock

SPEAKER_02 25:17

over into the livestock side of things.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Probably no question about that. Big increases or decreases in feed costs obviously do have an impact on the livestock market. So there's there's not much doubt that the livestock industry is gonna be watching pretty closely as well.

SPEAKER_02 25:35

Yeah, yeah, it'll I I already got the timer set on my phone for it so that way I don't miss it. Yeah, and it'll be interesting to watch cash cattle markets uh as we continue later and later into the summer here. I keep on thinking we're gonna see one one or two barns somewhere start to get piled up just a little bit with calves at some point if we really do start to run out of grass and water in some spots.

Drought Stress And Pasture Deterioration

SPEAKER_02 26:01

I know the water table and water and holes in some places is just looking pretty dry right now. And so your thoughts and prayers go out to those folks. But at the same time, if you don't have a place to keep them, they might be going to town.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Well, we talked about the drought monitor a little bit last week, and obviously in that southern plains area, central and southern plains, chances are pretty good when this week's drought monitor game comes out, it's probably going to look a little worse than what we saw last week. And in addition to that, overall pasture and range conditions through a good bit of the Central Plains, uh, if you look at at the proportion of pastures in the poor and very poor category, they've gone up substantially. So given what we've seen over the last month or so, in addition to what the forecast looks like for the next couple of weeks, it still looks like some some ongoing deterioration in terms of pasture conditions. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:04

Yeah, it does. Well, that's about all we have for slides this week, Mike. I thought it was a great set of them, like usual, but this one we I feel like we checked every single

Closing Takeaways And Next Week

SPEAKER_02 27:16

box kind of all over the place that we needed to in a fairly organized manner. So it was a lot of fun. Do you have any closing words of wisdom as we kind of close out this week's episode of Fat Tuesday?

SPEAKER_00 27:27

Good to visit with you, Jed. I think for the most part, in the very short run, while the futures markets um price reactions the last couple of days have been pretty muted. Uh, we've put a couple of dollars, in fact, close to five dollars on the Fed cattle market over the last couple of weeks, and at least here in the short run, it still looks to me like we've got a little bit of additional upside in both the cattle and the beef here in the short run.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Yep, I couldn't agree more. Well, Mike, thanks for coming on. Like always, I always enjoy talking to you every week. I'll talk to you next week.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Good to visit with you, Jed. Look forward to uh getting together again next week and we can take a look at what tomorrow's USDA reports look like.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

I can only imagine what we'll be talking about, but I'll talk to you then. Alrighty, Jed. Have a great week. You too.