February 23

2/23 – In Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on Feb 1st were 11.51M head, 1.8% below a year ago. New placements onto feedlots in Jan were down 4.7%. In a sign that high prices might be dampening beef demand, cattle marketings in Jan were 13.0% below a year ago. New world screwworm disease in Mexico shows no signs of abating. Mexico accounted for 4% of our beef cows in 2024 and the import ban left the U.S. short over a million feeders in 2025. In the U.S., there are scant signs of herd expansion. In Feb’s WASDE, the USDA said that beef production declined by 3.6% in 2025 and projected an additional 0.3% drop in 2026. USDA says cattle prices averaged $224.37/cwt in 2025 and projects $240.00 in 2026, both numbers shattering the previous record-high of $187.12/cwt in 2024. CME cattle futures hit another record high last week ($247.50) and closed at $246.57/cwt on Friday (2/20).