November 25

11/25 – In Friday’s Cattle on Feed report, the USDA said new placements onto feedlots in Oct were 10.2% above a year ago. That helped push the Nov 1st feedlot inventory to 11.83M head, 1.2% above last year. Placements were skewed toward lighter weights for the 2nd straight month, partly due to poor pasture conditions. In Nov’s Livestock, Dairy & Poultry Outlook, the USDA reduced projected 2019 beef production to just 0.6% above a year ago while raising its forecast for 2020 to +1.9%. Those numbers will be partially offset by a 1.3% drop in beef imports in 2019 and a projected 3.0% decrease in 2020. China has become the world’s top beef importer, draining supplies from Australian and New Zealand that were once earmarked for the U.S. That will impact the availability of lean 90s beef trimmings and push U.S. ground beef prices even higher in 2020.