The following is portion of an article from www.CattleNetwork.com:
by Greg Henderson, Editor, Associate Publisher, Drovers CattleNetwork
With feedyard losses already approaching $200 per head, Wednesday’s World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate (WASDE) report provided little hope for a quick turnaround. USDA said the drought will cut this year’s corn crop by 20 bushels per acre, and analysts noted that it was an unusual move for the National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) since the first field survey of crops will not occur until August.
This year’s corn crop production estimates were lowered to 12.970 billion bushels on 88.9 million harvested acres, an average of 146 bushels per acre, down from 166 last month. That’s down from 14.790 billion bushels estimated in the June report. USDA said, “Persistent and extreme June dryness across the central and eastern Corn Belt and extreme late June and early July heat from the central Plains to the Ohio River Valley have substantially lowered yield prospect across most of the major growing regions.” Along with a 903 million bushel carryover from the 2011 crop, the total supply will be 13.903 billion bushels.
The news likely had cattle feeders scrambling to readjust their ideas for the value of a feeder steer. Corn is already figuring in to rations at $7 per bushel, and nearly everyone expects it to go higher. That means feeder cattle will remain under pressure.
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Source: www.CattleNetwork.com
Posted by Haylie Shipp
