Latest / Professional Ag Marketing Podcast / There is Protein in Everything | Cattle Market Talk March 27th, 2026

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There is Protein in Everything | Cattle Market Talk March 27th, 2026 · Professional Ag Marketing Podcast

• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Cattle Talk Podcast.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Your weekly breakdown of Cattle Market Fundamentals, key news, and the insight within the industry.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Trading commodity futures and options involved with a potential risk of luck that is not suitable for all investors.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: A little March madness to end out the month here.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: Got Jeff with me.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about the cattle market, Jeff.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: First, I want to start with you had a busy week traveling across the United States speaking at different things.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: Let's start with your experience at the Bloomberg Intelligence Conference that you spoke at this week.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we had a pretty unique opportunity on one of their events.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they they Bloomberg Intelligence, you know, it would be the leg of that uh company who kind of focuses on market research, uh market data.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, the I think they had just about 300 people down there and be all users of their platform for their you know quotes as well as gathering information.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um they call it the fuel food and farming, so it had some um variety.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we were there to uh be a panelist on uh a segment about the pork industry and a segment about the beef industry, Mike.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the other panelists were you know really enjoyed getting to know those folks as well.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: They had certainly had all their numbers um and their ducks in a row as far as you know the things that they're watching in this marketplace and um and you know other topics around the the uh room were also really interesting.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: Some of those topics likely involving uh a very important stance closing out the week here, which would be about uh the renewable fuel industry.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what was kind of the major talking points between besides everybody getting pretty excited about the opportunities going forward.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a lot of uh a lot of excitement and interest around the you know what's supposed to be released this week.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And uh maybe you know it's if it's coming out this weekend, Mike, um, as far as the renewable um volume obligations.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, the fuel folks that were in the room were very excited to get that information out.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody had a lot of different opinions as far as um what it's going to say and what the gallons are going to suggest, but no doubt um there was a lot of energy down there around that topic and think and you know, pretty pretty bullish uh ethanol and renewable diesel and and all the above.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um about the only thing that they were super bullish on down there, to be quite honest with you.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: But we can jump into that in a minute.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: The those RVOs, that that news supposed supposedly those numbers did get leaked on Wednesday, but yeah, soybean oil's up a couple days after, but we'll see if if those are the actual numbers that come out here this week or or not.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: But uh the market hasn't bit too hard on it for actual impact on probably like corn or soybean futures at this point.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um they are trying to ease the price at the pump a little bit this week.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they're um expanding the E15 availability seasonally uh to try to ease some prices at pumps as well.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: So that was some renewable fuel news that kind of changed up this week, Jeff.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I guess you know one of the bigger takeaways that I've had that I had down there, you know, they had some folks um that were from Brazil, some folks talking about you know the palm oil uh markets over in Indonesia and Malaysia.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, and this is this has increased since the Iran War, of course, but I was really impressed at um you know how many other countries pretty much around everybody around the globe is really wanting to increase their renewable fuel, Mike.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that every government that uh at least all the examples that I was exposed to, um whether it's South America, whether it's in the Pacific Rim, whatever, um were pushing a renewable diesel, um, probably even more so than ethanol.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's a bit how we're there every country's government is trying to move away from their dependency on crude oil, obviously.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but with all that said, I mean the the palm oil market was is much bigger than what I ever anticipated.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And the US is still the marketplace that everybody wants access to for palm oil, even so we must use an incredible amount of diesel, Mike.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're still wanting to import that into the the western states here, California, Washington, so forth.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: So um that was all pretty interesting.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: A lot on the protein side, yeah.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: So protein, you know, I I mentioned earlier, it seemed like renewable fuel was about the only thing that uh they were bullish down there.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I I would say um that's all that's true, except for maybe we'll get into this in a minute, too, the supply side of the cattle.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: People are pretty optimistic about that, um, continue to sneak lower here.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: But no surprise there, really.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but as far as consumer sediment, consumer um, you know, the ability for consumers to to continue to keep up with today's pace um as far as inflation goes, and especially on the food side, just a lot of question marks around that.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Not a lot of data supporting the idea that they're slowing down or anything like that.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's pretty quick.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's pretty quick.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, most of these people, if they're not very rich anyways, them paying a little bit more on gas hasn't slowed them down from buying stakes yet, because they haven't even paid their credit card bill yet from this last month.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's fair.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, as far as any of the data that's been collected and and was showing on it all looked fairly positive yet.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um and especially up, unemployment's low, it the outside of that stuff, it looks okay yet on the economy.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: But as far as you know, finding somebody that was optimistic that that was gonna continue was few and far between down there.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: Did anyone talk about like$400 is the make or break point?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like uh why wasn't three hundred dollars the make and break point for choice?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like, was there any talk about that?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, and what they really went to is uh the retail beef side of things, and I think we've talked about that a little bit on this podcast too, Michael.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: But um very concerned, you know, that we've gone to a new level, of course, year over year, almost 20% increase from a year ago on retail brief beef.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm talking about um really concerned that we will not be able to push that any further in the coming 12 months.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um hands down, most popular opinion is that is all the higher she can go, and certainly the uh the ability for that value to slip lower um in the next 12 months is very real.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: So if retail prices aren't going to go any higher, then what can we expect out of the uh you know boxed beef on the choice side on the select side, more on the choice side, like you're indicating, around 400 bucks.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So um there there probably is some margin pressure that they can that will happen in the supply chain between what the boxed beef gets reported as and what that retail value is, Mike.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that can probably be squeezed some, but keep in mind that segment of the industry has the most influence over what people buy.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if they're getting squeezed really hard on margins, in my mind they're gonna look to try to bring other proteins in to replace what they're really struggling to make any money on.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So that would make sense.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I that so I just impressed that uh you know, there's a lot of things going on in the cattle industry right now, as far as you know, the fundamentals and the numbers and everything that we're all trying to digest, that almost nobody agrees with any with each other, um, except for on that one topic that retail price beef prices are going to gonna really struggle to increase in the next 12 months, probably gonna go down just a little bit.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um the other thing that was commented on, and we spent a decent amount of time on, and and I think a lot of us probably have seen this, but to see some pretty smart folks to put some numbers to it was really impressive.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, protein, and we mentioned, you know, anything that any data that we've collected so far, um whether especially on beef demand, I would argue, is nothing but impressive.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: They continue to buy and they continue to pay more for it.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: But how um how popular protein is right now was a big topic down there, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys are maybe seeing it too um at the grocery store level, but um people are starting to put protein into everything, right?
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean we own my wife and I own some coffee shops and like Starbucks, they're putting protein in all their drinks.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: That's their biggest hot selling topic.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_02: You've talked about like protein and odd things.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what was the one you mentioned this morning?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the one that they they had brought up was Pop Tarts.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So you can get a you can get a Pop Tart that has 14 grams of protein in it now.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it takes costs about four times as much.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's probably not any healthier either because they just boosted it with Stevie and all the other fun stuff to make it still taste good.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it just And that's mainly dairy whey products that they're using to increase protein and that's our assumption, Mike.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: I could be wrong.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: Most of what I've heard is that, anyways.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to pack that much protein in.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's gotta be the easiest way to get protein in the city.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's a processed protein of some sort, which isn't a negative thing either.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: But really impressive that you can put that much protein into it.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: He's got it on the screen there.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: So might have to add that to your target list here tonight, Jeff, for the kids.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, my my kids, that's what they need, some more protein for sure.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, it just in general, food pyramid getting flipped upside down.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: It they're taking it to a whole new level rather than just things with faces on it, like a cow or a calf, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, no doubt about it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they and they also they mentioned that, but they were they're also just looking at the the weight loss strategies, weight loss um medications that people are taking, um, really changing people's eating habits.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so those two guys things combined as well.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like GLP1, things like that, yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And Zembic.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: So no, it's that was all pretty impressive to me, I guess.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, the they had some really nice things to say about the pork industry.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'll probably get into that podcast, you know, get into that discussion in a podcast next week or so.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: But um, they thought they were on the right track as far as their new marketing campaign.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, thought they would be able to see some enrows to that.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: But and then quality, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you think about what why has beef um demand been so good in the past year?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they definitely would agree with us and say it's about quality.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: So people might eat a little bit less.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe some of that's from price, um, maybe some for some other reasons, but if they're gonna eat less, then they are gonna um so far go after some higher quality um cuts and meats.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the beef industry's done a great job of promoting a bunch more prime meat and a bunch of choice meat, of course.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, sounds like a fun conference.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: It was great to be a part of that uh with Bloomberg, anyways.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_02: Let's dive a little bit more into this cattle complex, just some of the current fundamentals impacting our markets.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: Morning, uh, morning print on cutout was up over four bucks here.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting a pretty good futures rally, bumped up against some nice resistance levels on the chart today, kind of backed off from there.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, the recent activity, though, I mean, we've seen pretty good drop in cutout.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: Slaughter's been pretty low.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Where do you want to start here on this thing?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the biggest news is today, of course.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's just a huge move in in future.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it feels like that market was maybe just coiled and waiting for an excuse to move one direction or another.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we had some we got fully steady cash happened yesterday.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen a lot of new news today.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I know earlier this morning it came out we're we're buying cattle for$235 again as a live bid.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you look at a chart too.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were just really kind of going sideways to steady um here for a little bit over a week.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like as soon as we pushed into new highs for this move, Mike, um, we got a lot of buying interest into the marketplace and we're able to push that.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: We did see some higher meat values, which is very welcome.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I do think that is one of the things of concern here on the AM print.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: So certainly we're trading that to some extent as well.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, and that's kind of the what's one of the metrics we got to pay attention to here in in the coming weeks.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, our kills are at rock bottom, like we've talked about several times.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, pulling that$10,$12 off of meat prices in the past you know, week is certainly concerning.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's your you know, as we've looked at this, it's not a surprise to us or our listeners, I don't think.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: It is that middle meats, that more expensive stuff, Mike, is what they're taking the value out of.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that all just it's a bit concerning, but you have to recognize how much that's gone up in the past three weeks, right?
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it is unusual for that type of a rally um this time of year.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's only March.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna get into, you know, you get further into April, into May.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think very naturally that beef demand will be here and be very supportive to that market.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think you're gonna have any issues there until you get to you know more of the back half of summer, is is my guess.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: But for now, um killing six, seven percent less uh than a year ago kind of looks like that's what the inventory is suggesting that we should have.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Umite, isn't it?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're we've backed some cattle, I believe, you know, just looking at the weights, we've backed some cattle um up into this part of the world, you know, this part of the calendar, I should say, kind of some of these yearlings and stuff that would usually go maybe late January, February.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're maybe just getting started to get going now.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um weights have been up pretty big the last two weeks, so I that storyline is continuing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna be marketing these yearlings for a while.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um with where the summer futures are too.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like it's telling you to get rid of them any anytime early here, is it?
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: It really isn't, and that's that's gonna continue to be the storyline is you know, we're gonna we're gonna the marketplace is trying to take what seems to be an a relatively balanced um supply situation compared to what the shackle speeds want to run um and pushing some of that inventory further back with an obviously a very willing accomplice with the uh feed yards, perfectly fine putting more weight on these cattle as long as they can get a packer to buy them.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: Any other final thoughts here for our listeners this week on the cattle market?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Big move higher in the futures.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you are toying with the high end of what we've seen here really going way back to last fall, Mike.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's some opportunities to take a really hard look at your position here.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: We've been waiting for some of these opportunities to get, you know, August up into the this mid-230s, above 235 at least.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: We'd love to see October kind of get up into that area too, but sometimes you don't get what you wished for, of course.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's time to get back focused here and and make sure we're happy with our coverage.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of added interest here.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: So thanks for tuning in today.
• 16:31
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• 16:39
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• 16:42
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