An Alternative to Cash Cattle Markets: Deriving Fed Cattle Values From Cutout
For more than a decade there has been a steady and rapid expansion in the percentage of US fed cattle selling on either a formula or negotiated grid, which has caused erosion in the share of negotiated live and dressed sales. This evolution in transaction types has caused a widening rift between producers who market their cattle differently. The growing level of frustration between producers boiled over in 2020, when the cattle industry saw its prices plummet while beef prices soared in the opposite direction in response to packing plant shutdowns and slowdowns during the spring Covid-19 outbreak.