Latest / CattleUSA Daily / 169: Cattle Market Update and Lauren’s Questionable Steak Cooking Decisions with Dan Gerhold

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169: Cattle Market Update and Lauren’s Questionable Steak Cooking Decisions with Dan Gerhold · CattleUSA Daily

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In today's podcast episode with Dan Gerald, we are talking all
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things cattle, commodities, market, what is happening in the
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world right now. And spoiler, it's a little bit
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different Dan's view today than what it has been a few weeks ago
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on what the market is currently doing right now, his thoughts on
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it. We break it all down for you
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guys today. And Dan and I get into the weeds
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a little bit at the end talking about how I prefer to cook my
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steaks. So if you want to hear that,
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make sure you stick around to the end and be ready for a good
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laugh. And I accept all the hate coming
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my way for the way I prefer. So without further ado, let's go
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ahead and hop into this episode with Dan.
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Welcome to the Cattle USA Daily podcast, your go to source for
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the latest livestock markets, industry insights and the
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updates shaping agriculture today.
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I'm your host, Lauren Moylan, a passionate advocate for
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agriculture here to keep you informed and connected.
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Now let's dive into today's episode.
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Dan, welcome back to the podcast.
1:05
Happy Thursday. Thursday, right?
1:08
Yeah. Thursday.
1:10
How's life in Iowa? Life is great.
1:12
It's harvest, full blown harvest season being formed.
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Everything's coming in, coming out, whatever you want to say.
1:19
Busy. A lot of stuff.
1:21
Happening, a lot of stuff. It's a busy time of year.
1:25
I will say I I am at that point in time in year where right now
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I have a cough drop in. I had to take my allergy
1:32
medicine this morning. I just want to put on one of
1:34
those like breathing respirators that they wear like the gas
1:38
masks so that I don't have to breathe in all of this stinking
1:42
ragweed pollen right now because I can deal spring allergies.
1:49
All of those things like I'm fine, ragweed comes into bloom,
1:53
I get absolutely sat down. Like it kicks me in butt.
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Yeah, yeah, pop Zyrtec like cough drops could come out of
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it. Yes, I'm sure.
2:06
Zyrtec like cough drops? I don't know if that is exactly
2:10
what you're supposed to do with Zyrtec, but duly noted you.
2:13
Want a breather if you want to suffer?
2:15
You have a point, you have a point I can like.
2:18
When it's really bad I do a Zyrtec and a Claritin and just
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like it works. So that's what we did this
2:24
morning. I'm not a doctor.
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This is not medical advice. Yep, same here, Lauren.
2:29
We're not giving instructional videos on how to cure allergies,
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dear. So yeah, delete that part.
2:36
Yeah. Jeez.
2:37
Well, what's happening in the markets, Dan?
2:39
A Long story short, and the tide seem to be turning.
2:43
Everybody wants to be bullish, in a happy mood that cattle
2:46
markets and our markets are going to RIP and go to the moon
2:50
and stay there forever. And I'd love to be happy,
2:54
optimistic, you know, eager. I'd love to rally the troops to
2:59
stop selling cash cattle at lower money.
3:02
But fortunately, I can't be in that camp, Lauren.
3:06
I may get some hate mail, some hate speech, I may get bashed on
3:10
social media. But at the end of the day, all
3:13
the indicators that I watch are are not showing signs of bullish
3:17
development coming soon. In fact, the opposite.
3:20
You know, we've, we've talked about several times that this is
3:23
a seasonal time where we're meet demand slows down.
3:26
A lot of people hang in their ass on the fact that we might,
3:28
we should come out of this as we get closer to the holidays and
3:32
and then flip the calendar into next year.
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I'm not sure I believe that this time.
3:37
I'd love to be optimistic once you get this, these calves
3:40
cleaned up in the north that the Packers are, are going to need
3:43
inventory again. But you know, when they're
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idling plants, you know, Fort Morgan's down here for a couple
3:49
weeks and and then you get past that you're you're in cooler
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cleaning season. I wouldn't be surprised if we
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see a plant down South maybe get idled for a couple weeks, maybe
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a month. It's it's hard saying.
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That's just my speculation, I haven't heard anything.
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It's hard for me to give when demand is changing this bad.
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Some people ask is demand really changing?
4:12
Other people say you know a bag of potato chips is 6-8 bucks why
4:15
shouldn't be be the same price? I'm not arguing that.
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I just know when you when you put domestic production against
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your imports and then subtract your exports, there's plenty of
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meat, in fact, more meat. We ran the calculation there's
4:31
more meat available to the domestic consumer right now than
4:35
there has been in the last five years and substantially more.
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That's a big problem. Why are prices dropping?
4:41
Well, that's the exact reason there's enough meat to go
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around. You know, even if demand was
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static, you know, it's still there's more available supply of
4:51
beef. So then we bring it back.
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Hey, we're we're not necessarily beef producers, you know, we
4:56
don't make the meat. We make the live animals that
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get turned into meat. So we have to look at it from
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the Packers side of things. They're still in red ink right
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now. Are they going to ramp that
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slaughter up? Are they going to get aggressive
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in the cash market if they're not profitable?
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The answer's no, I don't see a reason for it.
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The volumes not getting moved of, of what we're producing and
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what we need the volume to move, specifically the metals, you
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know, your, your high end cuts. If that doesn't get moved,
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they're not going to ramp up the slaughter and we've lost their
5:26
bullishness. I'd love to be like I said, I I
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I don't want to put everybody in a bad mood coming up to the
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weekend here, but at the end of the day, I've got a I've got to
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look at those data points and that's what they're telling me.
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You know, hogs poor cut out that had a nasty day yesterday as
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well. You know, we dropped, oh, we
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dropped it about two bucks on a big load count.
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So that's always optimistic. But then beef also got dropped
5:49
to 2 1/2 bucks At the end of the day, I just I, I don't see the
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things I need to see the remain bullish.
5:57
So if you want to flip the it's to the other side grains
6:01
actually changing. It seems like, you know, we had
6:04
a grain report here the other day.
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It dropped grains. So that was Tuesday.
6:09
All of a sudden, grains fell out of bed yesterday.
6:11
There's a big reversal because Trump claims, you know, he's
6:14
going to sit down with president's eye and talk about
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beans. And all the sudden up, up and
6:20
away we go off of our lows. So maybe that tide is turning
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now where managed money feels grains are a safer buy than what
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livestock are. You know, maybe it's just
6:31
seasonal, you know, well, obviously we've got to wait it
6:35
time tells us everything. But if we're in the business to
6:39
try and look ahead, you know, we're buying feeder cattle here
6:42
that aren't going to be ready for 5-6 months.
6:44
We're buying cabs right now that we're not going to sell as
6:47
earlings until, you know, March. We have to look at those markets
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and we have to plan accordingly. So if we're looking out into the
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future like that, what do we expect?
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Well, we just put 50-60 bucks on the fat cattle market in six
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months. We put $100 on the feeder cattle
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market in a year. I mean, what does that look like
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if that starts going the other way?
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I mean, is it going to go down just as fast?
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I'm not sure. Could it?
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Yeah, could it stabilize at a certain point?
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Absolutely. But at the end of the day, you
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know, high prices cure high prices and that's what it felt
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like. So yeah, beef, you know, I just
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it, it got high. It got talked about on every
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news outlet. It was talked about on social
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media everywhere and on story short is there's more beef
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available than what the consumer needs right now.
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And prices are are showing that. Have we really started to see
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that shift in consumer behavior? How's the hog market doing right
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now? Like is that kind of where we're
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seeing our consumers shift to right now or are they shifting
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to other protein options? It feels like they're shipping
7:53
the both pork and and poultry, chicken, Turkey, boat.
7:56
They're obviously cheaper at the end of the day.
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You know, if you if you break down the pork cut out, that also
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shows you a ship there. Yesterday we saw the rib section
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of pork just get hammered. But you see that it's easy to
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say the rib is a replacement for steak.
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Somebody's going to grill. What are they going to grill?
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They can smoke ribs, they can grill steaks, whatever.
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Well, when you see that type of action, when you see those cuts,
8:20
the bake in the rib, it just, it kind of goes back to show you,
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hey, what are we spending money on?
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Like I said, then that comes back to seasonals.
8:28
It's not the time of the year for major grilling.
8:30
The weather is phenomenal. We should see a lot of grilling
8:32
here, but we're not. It's just back to school
8:35
casseroles. Yeah, absolutely.
8:37
It's football season. We're not grilling steaks at
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football games where we have hot dogs, although they are all beef
8:43
hot dogs at our grill outs over here.
8:47
But still like it's, it's a shift in consumer behavior that
8:51
comes with the seasons. And it's one of those situations
8:55
that would we have loved to have seen the cattle market continue
8:58
to just like steadily have a nice little incline over the
9:02
next years and years and years. Absolutely.
9:06
But if we're real for a second, we all knew that this day was
9:09
coming. We all knew that a day was going
9:11
to come or Dan was going to come on here and he was going to give
9:13
us some really bad news and he was going to say, guys, I'm not
9:16
super hopeful right now. We all knew it was going to come
9:19
eventually. That bottle of whiskey, I know
9:22
it's 8:00 AM right now, but that bottle of whiskey is still
9:25
underneath the desk, you guys. And it's one of those situations
9:28
it's like, would we have loved to continue this?
9:30
Absolutely. But A, we've got seasonality
9:34
trends right now. B, we've got just consumer
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trends outside of seasonality. We've got the fact that beef
9:41
prices were higher. We've got the fact that beef was
9:43
being talked about more. And all of these other things
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that in and of themselves are small, but put them together and
9:50
you've got a cascade. And it's not a absolute
9:53
avalanche yet, but it's one of those things that, like you
9:57
said, Dan, we need to acknowledge that the potential
10:01
possibility is there that we're not going to see the best fall.
10:05
And it's the crazy thing about it, Lorna.
10:07
I mean, you can knock 50 bucks out of both of these markets and
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there's still high price if we're not making as much money
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as we were, you know, the feed yards at that point would
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obviously be losing money in a massive amount.
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But you know, the cow calf producer, the background are,
10:22
you know, there's still good high values worth protecting.
10:24
And I and a person can go out and buy a light cap right now,
10:27
background it until February and makes the money.
10:30
You know, you can protect those values with the LRP.
10:32
What not you know, there's there's still opportunities.
10:34
I'm not sitting here griping and telling everybody it's time to
10:38
run away from cattle and, you know, getting the grain
10:41
business. You know, there's still
10:43
opportunities. You know, there's, there's
10:44
cattle that work in the sale barns.
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You know, I, I saw prices soften it.
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It's just that time of year. You're starting to see more
10:51
available supplies of tabs. It's also national dead cap
10:54
month and nobody puts the bike out right now, rightfully so.
10:58
But yeah, there's, there's still going to be opportunities to
11:00
make money. I think we just have to be
11:02
smarter. And you know, the last two
11:04
years, it didn't matter what you did in cattle.
11:07
You made money. You went and bought something.
11:10
It made money. I mean, it was too easy.
11:13
Now you're going to have to really sharpen your pencils and
11:17
and keep your needles close, you know, keep that death loss to a
11:20
minimum, keep your feet cheap, you know, risk management on the
11:23
feed side. You know, we're really going to
11:25
have to sharpen our pencils and make sure we're protecting
11:29
profit when it's available. At the end of the day, I hope
11:32
I'm wrong. I'll learn.
11:33
I really, really hope that this bull market continues when we
11:36
get back at the month of October and we rally all the way into
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February like a normal seasonal market.
11:41
But I'll be honest, the spread, they're telling me the opposite,
11:44
that this is some very, very concerning indicators that I
11:48
walked. Yeah.
11:49
And it's, I think it's one of those situations that's like
11:52
just like you said, we don't need to start running for the
11:54
hills yet. It's just keeping our heads on a
11:56
swivel and it just acknowledging what the markets are doing and
11:59
not burying our head in the sand and letting it like exactly like
12:04
you said, looking at those profit margins and seeing where
12:07
we can tighten things up a little bit as we go into winter.
12:11
I know a lot of people have had to start feeding hay early and
12:14
all of those things like, OK, hay is expensive.
12:17
You start hay one week early, that's one cent per head more
12:22
that you're spending on everything.
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Like that's, that's significant. When you get into the hundreds
12:28
and all of those things like it's, it's significant.
12:31
And So what is your hay protocol?
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What's your hay loss like? Look at those things.
12:35
Or just what's your calf loss? Keep that, keep that Draxon in
12:38
the truck. Like make sure that you are not
12:42
cutting corners anywhere and tightening up ship where you can
12:47
to just prepare ourselves to prepare ourselves for a shifting
12:51
of the market. And hello, welcome to the
12:53
catalog industry. Like markets shift all the
12:56
freaking time. We're just glad that for the
12:58
past few months it's shifted in our favor.
13:01
Right, It comes down to prices, just a a tool for rationing
13:06
supplier demand. You know, when when we don't
13:09
have the supply and the demand is good, the price goes up and
13:12
then all of a sudden you get a price where hey, we're going to
13:14
ration demand, increase supply and the price goes down.
13:18
It's just the nature of the beast and and anybody in this
13:21
business should realize it would be glorious if we all became
13:26
billionaires off doing the same thing we do every year.
13:29
But markets have tendencies of of correcting themselves in both
13:33
directions. So should be prepared that's,
13:36
you know, look at that 52 week coverage on on cedar cattle, you
13:39
know, step out a whole year because 34350 might not be here
13:43
this time next year. Yeah, absolutely.
13:46
We saw it last year. We've seen $100 increase over a
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year. Like we have no idea what could
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happen in the next year and how to anticipate that.
13:56
So protect yourselves where you can.
13:58
I have a funny story to share. So earlier you were talking
14:02
about people turning to different cuts, like we're
14:05
turning to ribs right now or different things like that.
14:08
Well, we are nearing that time of year in our household where
14:12
our freezer is getting pretty empty.
14:13
We have my husband hunts, so we typically have venison in the
14:17
freezer and then we typically get half of a cow.
14:21
And nearing this time of year, hunting season is starting right
14:24
now. My husband actually got a dough
14:25
last night. So our freezer's a little empty.
14:27
We are we're very low on venison.
14:29
We have no real like steak cuts left and I'm that type of person
14:34
that like I'm going to go rob my parents freezer before I go to
14:37
the store to buy a steak. Like sorry, I am that consumer
14:41
right now that looks at those prices and I'm like, I'm not
14:43
paying that. I'll go I'll go rob the freezer
14:45
at the ranch real quick. And so we have been trying to
14:48
use up our different cuts that are in our freezer.
14:52
And one night I go out there and I'm and just got some veggies
14:56
for a side and I'm like, I just need a cut of beef.
14:59
Well, I see a package of short ribs in there.
15:00
I'm like, what can I do with those?
15:02
What can I do with those? I do what you really shouldn't
15:07
do with short ribs. And I take this package.
15:10
I season them up, I put them in the air fryer.
15:14
I pull out my short ribs. 1520 minutes later, jerky.
15:19
It was bited into jerky. And I want to make it pretty
15:23
clear that, like, I'm really good in the kitchen.
15:25
Like, God made me to be in the kitchen.
15:28
OK, I'm good in there. I can bake.
15:30
I can cook. Like I'm good in the kitchen.
15:32
I don't use recipes for 90% of my meals.
15:34
Like, I know my way around, except when it comes to ribs.
15:37
I've never prepared ribs myself before.
15:40
And my husband comes home, like after I've already done this and
15:43
he bites into one and he's like, yeah, we won't be doing that
15:46
again. So yeah, must learn.
15:49
Don't air fry your ribs if you're getting down to the
15:52
dredges of your freezers, like we are awaiting on deer to come
15:56
in or have beef to come in, all those things and you look at
15:59
those ribs and you think it's a good idea to cook those up for
16:01
dinner real quick when you don't have anything else planned.
16:04
Don't do it. Don't do it.
16:06
Just leave them in the back of the freezer for your husband or
16:08
for the person in your family that decides that they want to
16:11
spend 12 hours cooking these ribs, not 12 minutes.
16:14
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I'm about that air fryer
16:19
and be they just don't go together.
16:21
They do though. I OK, this is probably a
16:24
cardinal sin and I'm probably going to get so much hate mail
16:27
for this and that's OK. OK, I air fry my steaks.
16:31
Hold. On I get it or is it the leave
16:34
button or? OK, don't knock it until you try
16:37
it. I, it is wonderful actually
16:41
because I learned this when I was in college all right,
16:44
because I had an air fryer in college and I didn't have a
16:46
grill in college. And so I figured out that I
16:49
could air fry these steaks for like 5 minutes aside in this air
16:52
fryer and it would get so crispy on the outside and be perfectly
16:56
medium, like medium rare on the inside.
16:59
And it was just wonderful and like melt in your mouth.
17:02
The fat on the outside was nice and crispy, all of these things.
17:06
And I have brought that into adulthood.
17:07
And I still cook my steaks in the air fryer.
17:09
And I don't care if it is a cardinal sin, if it is the worst
17:13
thing in the world, but darn it, it tastes good.
17:16
And I get a nice crisp on them. And I actually prefer my steaks
17:18
in the air fryer than I do like using a cast iron in the house.
17:22
Granted, if I'm going to go out and I'm going to put them on the
17:24
Traeger or if I'm going to put them on the grill, like that's a
17:27
completely different flavor profile that you're creating
17:29
right there. I understand, understand that.
17:31
But if I'm cooking one in the house and I myself don't want to
17:35
go out and start the grill, I'm either going to use a cast iron
17:38
or I'm going to use the air fryer and the cast iron just
17:41
doesn't match the air fryer. I'm sorry.
17:43
All right, so for the 12 listeners out there who are
17:46
listening to it, we're going to have a live podcast viewing on
17:52
These Days up here in Iowa, or we're going to have a cooking
17:55
class as well to teach Lauren how to probably cook steak.
17:59
I don't know when. Stay tuned.
18:01
But we're. Yeah.
18:03
Normally, if somebody wants to eat their steaks out of an air
18:07
fryer, if they want to use ketchup, I really don't care
18:10
because at the end of the day, they're consuming steaks.
18:13
And that's great. That's what, Matt.
18:14
But come on, Lauren, I don't. Use any sauces and I eat my
18:18
steak rare to medium rare. That's got to get me some
18:20
brownie points somewhere. All right, I'll give you.
18:24
Yeah, yeah, we took off and we'll give you 1 back.
18:28
I'm gonna, like, lock you. I'm gonna come up to Iowa.
18:30
I'm gonna lock you in your house.
18:31
And I'm gonna have an air fryer and I'm gonna have a grill.
18:34
And I'm gonna cook a steak. And you're not gonna know which
18:36
one I used. And I'm gonna give it to you.
18:38
And you're gonna have to guess. And actually, no, I'll cook 2.
18:40
I'll cook one on each. And you'll have to guess, and
18:43
no, we can't use you. You're biased.
18:45
We need to use someone that's not biased because then they can
18:49
see these two steaks. You cook one on the grill, I'll
18:51
cook one in the air fryer. They can judge these steaks and
18:53
tell us which one's better. What do you want to bet on this?
18:56
Because I'm I could bet farms, I could bet, you know, I don't
19:01
know, I bet. The cows.
19:02
Buddies money in the world on the I know which one's going to
19:06
be better, but hey, I'm not here to date you.
19:09
Hey, I don't know. I prove me wrong.
19:12
I just want to say say you may drag me up to Iowa sometime and
19:16
give me the Dan Garahold one O 1 state cooking class.
19:21
But I did get taught how to cook beef and steaks in the NCBA test
19:26
kitchen. So like and they told me it was
19:30
fine that I air fried my steak. They judged me, but they said
19:33
that, you know, it's still good so.
19:35
I did not come on today's episode with the intention of
19:38
bashing on the NCBA oil. Or I think we could just move on
19:43
from this topic. We don't need to.
19:46
It's not going where it should have.
19:50
My God, yeah, we're going to do that.
19:54
We'll have a Cooking 5 cooking with Lauren.
19:56
Hey, I'm a really good cook, OK? I just cooked my steaks in an
20:00
air fryer. And you know what?
20:01
If everyone wants to send me some hate mail or leave a nasty
20:05
comment, so be it. I'm not going to stop.
20:08
I'm still going to cook my steaks in the air fryer because
20:10
it takes me 12 minutes total to do that.
20:14
And I can. You want to hear something
20:15
worse? You can put a frozen steak in an
20:17
air fryer too and it still turns out really good.
20:20
No, we got to stop. This is not going well.
20:23
I think we're losing viewers. We're going from bump down at 9.
20:27
I don't know. Maybe.
20:29
I don't know. We'll see.
20:30
Maybe you could prove me wrong. Maybe you know how to do it
20:32
well. That's so funny.
20:33
Well, now you can have nightmares about your wife air
20:37
frying steaks. Yeah, I seriously don't know how
20:39
to pivot off of this. How do we did you on?
20:42
So to summarize them of cattle market.
20:45
Yeah, it's all the all the viewers.
20:47
That is not bashing me for my decisions on how to cook my
20:52
steaks. Please cook your steaks however
20:54
you like. If you like air fryer steaks,
20:55
just please cook them that way. Just as long as you're cooking
21:00
and consuming steak, I don't care how you cook it.
21:02
I just, well, I'm fun, Lauren. It's been a great podcast.
21:11
My gosh. Well.
21:12
I'm. Yeah, like subscribe rate
21:16
review. If you have any hate comments to
21:18
send, send them to Dan. Yeah, yeah.
21:22
Yep, Yep, Yep. If you want to bash me for my
21:25
stakes choices, that's fine too. I'll take it.
21:28
I've accepted my fate. It's totally fine.
21:31
Dan's not the first person to react like that.
21:33
My dad about had an aneurysm when I told him it's fine.
21:36
So, yeah, thanks for all the great market insight, Dan.
21:39
Yeah, and for all the viewers, if you want to see this cooking
21:43
class go down, make sure you put that in the comments so we can
21:47
make this happen. Yes, yes, 100%.
21:50
You got to let us know that this is actually something you want
21:53
to see, and not that I'm driving my happy butt up from Kansas all
21:56
the way to Iowa into the middle of a cornfield to have a cooking
22:01
class with Dan. OK, that feels like a great
22:03
place to end this podcast well. Sure does good job.
22:09
All right. Well, Dan, thank you to all of
22:11
our listeners. Thanks for putting up with our
22:13
antics this morning. Have a great rest of your day
22:15
and we'll see you all on another episode next time.
22:18
Have a good one y'all.