Lemmy’s Thoughts for July:

 

1.    It seems that the funds are chasing the corn, feeder and live cattle futures all over the board. It doesn’t really make any sense, but it is the way things are at the present time.  

2.    Gives us some opportunities to do some risk management if we can figure what basis to use. With diesel fuel at its present price, cattle value changes considerably for every 100 miles of additional freight.

3.    I am looking forward to the summer meeting in Denver of NCBA. It is always a pleasure to see old friends and make new ones. The discussions concerning our industry are always informative and give some understanding of what is going on. If you aren’t a member of NCBA I would encourage you to do so. They are really working to represent us on all the political fronts that we must deal with daily.

4.    Moisture conditions are quite critical in many parts of the Southeast at the present time.

5.    It was interesting at the ranking of beef cattle operations in the US by states and the numbers of cattle in each one. This just came from NCBA this week.

CattleNetwork is publishing an interesting series called, "Understanding the Food Supply in America."  There are 757,900 beef cow operations in the United States.  Here are the top 10 states, ranked in order of the most operations, followed by the number of operations in the state and percentage that represents of U.S. beef cow operations: (1) Texas, 130,000, 17.15%; (2) Missouri, 54,000, 7.12%; (3) Oklahoma, 48,000, 6.33%; (4) Tennessee, 42,000, 5.54%; (5) Kentucky, 38,000, 5.01%; (tie 6 -7) Arkansas, 26,000, 3.43% and Kansas, 26,000, 3.43%; (8) Iowa, 25,000, 3.30%; (9) Alabama, 23,000, 3.03%; and (10) Virginia, 21,000, 2.77%.

 

 

 

 

Sincerely, Lemmy