Agricultural News
Weekly Beef Trade Prices Post Mixed Finish, Volume Still Dropping
Mon, 08 Apr 2013 16:15:36 CDT
Ed Czerwien, USDA Market News, Amarillo, Texas, files this report for the beef trade ending March 30, 2013. You can hear his full report by clicking on the LISTEN BAR at the bottom of this story:
The daily spot Choice box beef cutout ended the week at $191.32 which was about $2.25 higher on only 731 loads of the daily spot beef reported, which represents 11 percent of the total trade for the week.
The Comprehensive Choice cutout, which is the weekly average of all types of sales (including the spot trade, formula trade, and out-front trade, etc,) was at $191.57, which was 88 cents lower than last week.
The total reported Box Beef volume was 6,491 loads which was 669 loads lower than last week's numbers. The formula trade was 3,320 loads for the week which was 256 loads better than last week and 51% of the total sales.
The out-front sales were at 925 loads which was down 395 loads, however last year we averaged about 1,350 loads per week during April, which is the peak booking period for the Memorial grilling weekend.
Exports reported 954 loads which was 37 loads lower than the previous week. The NAFTA exports represented only 195 of those loads, with 759 loads going overseas.
The most recent 10-week rolling box beef sales average was 6603 loads per week which compares to 7327 loads per week last year at this same time and was 724 loads less than last year average. To put that in perspective, that's like not selling the product from roughly 43,000 head of steers and heifers each week for 10 weeks in a row compared to last year. However we cut the kills about 12,000 head of steers and heifers each week since the first of the year compared to last year, but they are heavier.
The cow cutout ended the week almost 3.00 lower as many western packers have been getting more dairy cows due to lower milk prices and heavy culling.
The finished cattle trade was mostly steady with the end of last week at 128-129. Dressed prices were steady to 1 higher at 203-205 with some areas that were a little behind last week showing some improvement and catching up.
The average live weight for cattle harvested from the Texas Panhandle was two pounds higher at 1,230. That compares to 1,232 lbs last year.
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