News

Economist says he expects USDA to update cattle price projections

A livestock economist says the USDA will likely update their cattle price projections in Thursday’s supply and demand report.

Scott Brown says cash cattle prices have been moving lower. “Does that make them trim back their estimate for 2025 yet,” he says.  “I’m not sure the fundamentals have changed, but I’m curious to watch what others are going to begin to do as we continue to see some of this downward movement in cattle prices of late.”

He tells Brownfield, “It gives us another estimate of yields for corn and soybeans as we start to get into full swing of harvest in some parts of the country.”

Brown says he’s not expecting any big changes on the hog side. “The kind of path that we’ve kind of been on in hogs probably continues with good, reasonable productivity growth, which keeps us growing pork production slightly,” he says. 

The report comes out at Noon Eastern/11 AM Central.