March 23

3/23 – In Friday’s monthly cattle report, the USDA said feedlot inventories on Mar 1st were 11.55M head, 0.2% below a year ago. New placements onto feedlots in Feb were up 3.7%. In a sign that high prices might be dampening beef demand, cattle marketings in Feb were 6.8% 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 March’s WASDE, the USDA said that beef production declined by 3.6% in 2025 and projected an additional 0.7% drop in 2026. USDA says cattle prices averaged $224.37/cwt in 2025 and projects $242.00 in 2026, both numbers shattering the previous record-high of $187.12/cwt in 2024. CME cattle futures hit another record high in Feb ($247.50) and have settled back in March to $233.43/cwt (3/20).