COVID-19 likely to affect beef industry into 2021
Pay attention to cattle price upswings; it may be time to avoid more losses and sell.
Cattle processing challenges continue to limit the amount of beef available to consumers. While daily slaughter levels have consistently improved, they have yet to approach levels that would match slaughter-ready cattle supplies, let alone begin to work through the backlog of cattle accumulated during the past two months.
This scenario continues to disrupt normal cattle marketing patterns. The recent monthly USDA Cattle on Feed report showed cattle placed into feedlots with at least 1,000-head capacity during April were more than 22% lower than the previous year for the second consecutive month.
April cattle slaughter recently was reported as nearly 600,000 head below the 2019 level, and estimated daily slaughter data for May points to a similar if not slightly larger decline.
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