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Livestock economist: cattle market off to a stronger start in 2024

A livestock economist says cattle markets are starting 2024 in a much better position than they were last year.  University of Missouri’s Scott Brown says markets performed well last week.  “We called cattle up $2.50 this week with the early information,” he says.  “I’ll say that’s about $1.75 for fed cattle prices that gets us there. Just realize we started 2023 with $1.58 for fed cattle.”

Brown says there was a lot of volatility in the markets in 2023. “We could talk about reaching nearly $1.90 at one point during the year, and we’ve fallen back off since then,” he says.  “But we are still talking about being $17.00 a hundred above where we started the year.”

He says the hog market also saw a drastic change in prices. “We started the year at $79.72, about $80.00, and we finished the year at $68,” he says.

At the same time, he tells Brownfield feed costs continue to pull back.  “This is the one that we’re going to continue to remind ourselves helps the bottom line,” he says.  “January 6th of 2023, we had $7.00 corn and a little more than $500 a ton soybean meal prices.  When you look at the latest data we have for Omaha, Corn is $4.76 and soybean mill at $435 a ton.”

Brown says with ongoing contraction in the cattle industry there’s still a lot of upside potential for prices, and with trendline or above yields in South America and the US in 2024, producers could see feed costs decline even further.